The Pearl Fisher

Lord of Misrule II In his autobiography Christopher Lee described bursting into Peter Cushing’s dressing room shouting “I have no lines!” Cushing replied “you are lucky, I’ve read the script”. Later he mentions staying with Mr and Mrs Cushing in Whitstable where he had an “elaborate aquarium of tropical fish”. Like my companion he also tells of Cushing’s enormous ornithological knowledge.

I was most taken by another passage on pages 274-5

“dying as Dracula was usually worse than having a tooth out. Being struck by lightning was the least of my discomforts. The worse was the time they discovered that vampires cannot abide hawthorns. I thought the religious connotation in dubious taste, but a film studio is not the ideal setting to thrash out a theological issue. I had to crash through a tangle of hawthorn bushes with a crown of thorns on my head, with Peter Cushing on the further side waiting to impale me with a stake snatched from a fence. They lacked the foresight to provide a dummy tree and I had to tear a way through vegetation with spines two inches long, emerging for tge coup de grâce shedding genuine Lee blood like a garden sprinkler.
Bullets, daggers, paper-knives, stakes, darts and lances were embedded in me. Poison, heart failure and old age attacked me from within. I became dust – red, green or sooty. I was drowned, asphyxiated and incinerated, and three times when I was burnt, the barn or studio went up too. I always came back for more. Through clouds of nuclear waste I intoned, ‘the world shall hear of me again.'”.

Wednesday, 17 February 2010

Confusion

I am impatient to get to Whitstable. It seems that I will not be able to truly move on until I have finally encountered Mr Bown in the act of calling. My companion has reminded me on several occassions that there is another bingo hall not two hundred yards from my lodgings but I am unwilling to dilute the experience with pale imitation. This morning I came across a page in my notebook which illustrates my current state of mind. It is illustrated and transcribed in list form below.

Gleam
A matter of life and death
Chromamnesia
Flowers
Lips
Standing still
Colour
Camera Obscura
Magic
Appear
Pearlville
Double acts
Chases
Slapstick
Romance
Emotion
Villains
Heroes
Make do
Westerns
Gangsters
Ruffians
Narrative ideas for the count of monte cristo
Justice
Treasure sparkling possiblities
Disguise and revenge
Plots
Goldfinger idea
Revenge on all those people who have ever slighted me
Dancers
Three girls
Dumped
Various

Last night we watched the Powell and Pressburger film “A Matter of Life and Death” I had seen it twice in the last twenty or so years. Despite this I was surprised to see that the action on Earth was in colour and Heaven in black and white. I had remembered it the other way round.

Tuesday, 16 February 2010

Magic

Cathy Lomax has asked me to make some work for the next edition of ‘Arty’ the title is to be ‘magic’ so I spent some time yesterday reprising my “Pepper’s Ghost” illusion for the stills camera. I found a statue of the Virgin Mary to be my assistant. She seemed very comfortable in the act of appearing magically inside the studio window. Virginity is, I suppose, not a condition usually associated with magician’s assistants. Though often they feign ingenuousness they know too much. They have been initiated. Though I haven’t yet decided which images to send to Cathy (they must also work in black and white) I am drawn to those which reveal the illusion. It is as if knowledge of the trick has failed to diminish the magic.

Latest Digest to be read in reverse

Thursday, 11 February 2010

Lost post

I spent twenty minutes writing a post about my visit to Islington Mill today. Just as I added the last picture the screen went blank. All was lost. Too tired now to write more. I am left with a list of people mentioned seen and met.
Messrs Dave Griffiths & Andy Bracey (many thanks for everything)
Young Master Bracey and his car
Tomas Harold (thanks for lunch)
Jeremy Deller (nice jumper)
Lesley Young (I think)
Bill
Rachel Goodyear
Deaf taxi driver
Blind taxi driver

The Count of Monte Cristo

At 1130 four artists (Annabel Dover, Hayley Lock, Mimei Thompson and I) were huddled together in the V&A café scribbling things and talking. Being largely from the country we had barely managed to negotiate the new multi-queue system unharmed. In actual fact one of our number had managed to drop their tray, cake, cups and all onto a (luckily) booted foot. We had wrangled with the hard-faced waitresses (clearly used to more vociferous complainers than we) but without satisfaction. So in a none too secret (or dark) corner we began our meeting. We were there to put together ideas for a new show, to come up with a title and a rough plan outlining how we should proceed. I began with what I hoped would be a rousing speech outlining the great obstacles ahead, the enemies we must overcome and the weapons at our disposal. We discussed many things: possible venues for our work (mostly linked to places each of us would like to visit); people who could help us (some practical, mostly fanciful), but most importantly what the show would “be about”. This is a nasty phrase but as each of us hedged around our interests we came up with much common ground. Tales of Darkness, treasure, boyish adventure, secrecy and revenge seemed favourite.

This hopelessly un-cabal-like meeting was hours ago. Now I am thinking of Lubinville on a Virgin train travelling north. It is painfully over heated in carriage C. The passengers slump flushed and languid and I find it hard to concentrate. I have been watching a BBC3 documentary on the Vampire and have decided that this is definitely the final nail in the coffin for the genre.

‘Gone With The Wind’ is a colourful film. The overture, a painted intertitle, is resolutely still for an absurd length of time. So still in fact that I twice checked the DVD for scratches.
I can’t recall the plot this morning only the painted backdrops, flounces and the colour, too much colour, colour so dark and rich it tired my eyes and I thought of Des Esseintes’ bejewelled tortoise. Here I have to admit this surfeit of polychromasic sensation was at least partially self inflicted as I had been fiddling with my projector and had managed to boost all channels to ridiculous levels.

This morning the road to London seems bloodless in comparison.

Sunday, 7 February 2010

“Lord of Misrule”

Christopher Lee notes that he was conceived at the same time that Murnau was making “Nosferatu”. He describes “The Scars of Dracula” (the only Hammer Dracula I haven’t seen) as “truly feeble” and a quick flick through the illustrations remind me that, like his dear friend Mr Cushing, he too was in a “Star Wars” film titled “The Phantom Menace”. Closing my eyes In langourous ecstasy I enjoy this toothsome serendipity.

Saturday, 6 February 2010

Letter recieved regarding sideburns and performance art

Hi Alex,

I was just watching a really bad vampire film called Vlad on Zone Horror, but I’ve turned it off now, supposedly in favour of sleep.
Been enjoying your blog, though sorry to hear you’re not well, hope you feel better soon! I’ve finally started making myself keep one, in the hope it will better enable me to string a sentence together when people ask me what I’ve been working on… thought my latest entry might appeal to your dislike of performance art: http://snailsong.blogspot.com/2010/02/de-tangling-…
While I tried to be suitably diplomatic in my blog about it, I actually found myself reminded of why I hate art sometimes! There was plenty of very dislikeable performance art there, including one extremely cringey piece involving a naked man psychoanalysing himself in a mirror. There was some stuff that was ok, but it was generally not the happiest occasion for me!
There is at least one other performance art thing i’ve agreed to take part in coming up, but that should be more fun. I hope so anyway!

Oh, I was also going to tell you, I went to a birthday party where it was obligatory to wear sideburns, as the host’s impressive sideburns are his trademark. Mine were made of card and stuck on.

Take care,

Sonya x

Miss Brown and the Phantom

Miss Brown spends the morning cleaning her rooms. Below I lie in bed thinking about yesterday’s events. In Ipswich returning to unlock my bicycle, I came across a man admiring it. It is true that the Phantom takes on new life in the sunlight, it is a handsome creature. The man, in his late thirties, with a Canadian accent asked me if I would consider selling it. I replied that in all conscience I could not as I loved it too dearly. For his part he seemed to take my answer well and wished me good fortune. My companion informed me that she had observed a great number of men of varying ages looking longingly at my bicycle.

Today in my reverie, I have begun to think about the need for profit. Perhaps I shall make some brothers and sisters for the Phantom.

In the evening my companion and I went to the Town Hall Galleries to see a show by Simon Liddiment and a fabulous display of work by some of my students from Suffolk New College. I smiled with surprise upon entering the gallery as the redoubtable Mr Liddiment had produced a show of what looked like East Anglian landscapes; some snowy, some ploughed even one which appeared tinct with a ruddy evening light. Ofcourse they were no such thing, it was all very interesting. I am sorry to report that, as usual, I had soon drunk too much and was reclining on a fortuitous sofa answering questions about the intended extent of my sideburns.