Showing posts with label dan holloway. Show all posts
Showing posts with label dan holloway. Show all posts
Wednesday, 13 June 2012
Hungerford Bridge at the Hammer and Tongue Final (video)
Performing Hungerford Bridge at the Hammer and Tongue Oxford grand Final. Really really pleased with how it went - huge thanks to James Webster for some very helpful tips.
Friday, 25 May 2012
Be Spectacular (and be more French)
(my new collection of poetry is available for Kindle & Kindle app here for £1)
The inscription at the front of my book (life:) razorblades included says simply
"be spectacular and die living"
That's still about as much as needs to be said on the subject of either life or art. The rest, as it were, is just unpacking. It's so incredibly difficult to keep it plastered to the inside of our eyelids as we wade through life, and, to get more specific, as writers setting out "to be published" or "to sell books" or even "to connect with readers". The line itself is something I've become a dab hand at churning out but singularly bad at reflecting upon and aspiring to. My recent lift in spirits and creative direction has been largely a result of thinking about that simple mantra.
Which brings me to one of the catalysts, which in turn got me thinking. One of my favourite films, Man on Wire, was on TV a week or so ago. Watching it, spellbound (for those of you unfamiliar with it, this a documentary about Philippe Petit, a tightrope walker who, with a few co-conspirators, in 1974 illicitly rigged a cable between the twin towers of the World Trade Centre, and proceeded to walk across - and then back, and back again, stopping to lie down, to look down, to kneel to the dawn, almost dancing as he played dare with the police waiting to arrest him at the other end), one line struck me. One of the first things the arresting officers asked him was "why?" Petit's response was one of those lightbulb moments. Odd, because it's a common question - we all think of those "why?" "because" exchanges about climbing Everest. But Petit's response wasn't "because", it was to shake his head and despair that after such a beautiful moment the officer had deflated it with something as banal as a question.
For me, that exchange is a perfect commentary on the cultural life.
It also set me thinking (natinal cultural stereotyoe alert!). One of the things I'm researching for a new book is parkour. Don't worry, I'm not actually doing it, rather I'm researching those who do, and the philosophy behind it.
Parkour (the art of movng through a space continually forward by finding ways for your body - and mind - to overcome obstacles - you may not realise it but you saw it in that BBC ad a few years ago that you thought was all stunts and mats and tricks but wasn't) was given its shape and identity by David Belle (that's him in the video), who developed it with his friends in Fecamp, in France. And then I thought about the incredible "spiderman" Alain Robert. And the stereotyping part of my brain took hold of the fact that the three people I was thinking about were French. Now, we're used to people talking about literature and philosophy in France and their place in French life, but maybe it's not really Bernard Henri Levy and Michel Houellebecq we should think of but the likes of Belle, Petit, and Robert.
Petit's words have blended sowly into that mantra over the last few days - the need to do something spectacular, beautiful, memorable and, possibly equally important, inexplicable. But for those of us whose bodies are closer to Henri Levy than Belle, and dabble in creativity with our minds, what does that mean? "Be spectacular" - the rest, as I said at the start, is just the unpacking, and yet absolutely everything is in that unpacking. In focusing on a thing - a single, spectacular, beautiful thing, and moving always and only towards it. Sometimes it seems to me as though the thing is life itself - but life, as my last two collections have been written to demonstrate, is nothing without content, without relentless energy and celebration. At other times I think asking the question at all is the problem - a sign of my Englishness? - and yet these remarkable characters don't have the aimlessness of people who haven't honed down their goal to absolute concreteness in the way we imagine when we think of a lack of questionning.
Then I thought on, of my recent conversations with friends who know far more than me about zen, Trevor Barton and Viv Tuffnell, and I wondered if they would tell me that the key is not to question but to "know", whcih made me think "but I don't know". But maybe the answer is that it is the questionning - of ourselves, our lives, our world, that stops us from "know"ing what we have to do, and then giving ourselves to doing it. Maybe the answer lies in learning to know oneself well enough that one does not have to question - which sounds a lot like what I have said about confessional art and stripping everything to your most basic truth. I'm still not there, but maybe I'm startig to learn which questions not to ask. The fundaental mantra seems unchallengable, though, for us as artists:
"be spectacular"
The inscription at the front of my book (life:) razorblades included says simply
"be spectacular and die living"
That's still about as much as needs to be said on the subject of either life or art. The rest, as it were, is just unpacking. It's so incredibly difficult to keep it plastered to the inside of our eyelids as we wade through life, and, to get more specific, as writers setting out "to be published" or "to sell books" or even "to connect with readers". The line itself is something I've become a dab hand at churning out but singularly bad at reflecting upon and aspiring to. My recent lift in spirits and creative direction has been largely a result of thinking about that simple mantra.
Which brings me to one of the catalysts, which in turn got me thinking. One of my favourite films, Man on Wire, was on TV a week or so ago. Watching it, spellbound (for those of you unfamiliar with it, this a documentary about Philippe Petit, a tightrope walker who, with a few co-conspirators, in 1974 illicitly rigged a cable between the twin towers of the World Trade Centre, and proceeded to walk across - and then back, and back again, stopping to lie down, to look down, to kneel to the dawn, almost dancing as he played dare with the police waiting to arrest him at the other end), one line struck me. One of the first things the arresting officers asked him was "why?" Petit's response was one of those lightbulb moments. Odd, because it's a common question - we all think of those "why?" "because" exchanges about climbing Everest. But Petit's response wasn't "because", it was to shake his head and despair that after such a beautiful moment the officer had deflated it with something as banal as a question.
For me, that exchange is a perfect commentary on the cultural life.
It also set me thinking (natinal cultural stereotyoe alert!). One of the things I'm researching for a new book is parkour. Don't worry, I'm not actually doing it, rather I'm researching those who do, and the philosophy behind it.
Parkour (the art of movng through a space continually forward by finding ways for your body - and mind - to overcome obstacles - you may not realise it but you saw it in that BBC ad a few years ago that you thought was all stunts and mats and tricks but wasn't) was given its shape and identity by David Belle (that's him in the video), who developed it with his friends in Fecamp, in France. And then I thought about the incredible "spiderman" Alain Robert. And the stereotyping part of my brain took hold of the fact that the three people I was thinking about were French. Now, we're used to people talking about literature and philosophy in France and their place in French life, but maybe it's not really Bernard Henri Levy and Michel Houellebecq we should think of but the likes of Belle, Petit, and Robert.
Petit's words have blended sowly into that mantra over the last few days - the need to do something spectacular, beautiful, memorable and, possibly equally important, inexplicable. But for those of us whose bodies are closer to Henri Levy than Belle, and dabble in creativity with our minds, what does that mean? "Be spectacular" - the rest, as I said at the start, is just the unpacking, and yet absolutely everything is in that unpacking. In focusing on a thing - a single, spectacular, beautiful thing, and moving always and only towards it. Sometimes it seems to me as though the thing is life itself - but life, as my last two collections have been written to demonstrate, is nothing without content, without relentless energy and celebration. At other times I think asking the question at all is the problem - a sign of my Englishness? - and yet these remarkable characters don't have the aimlessness of people who haven't honed down their goal to absolute concreteness in the way we imagine when we think of a lack of questionning.
Then I thought on, of my recent conversations with friends who know far more than me about zen, Trevor Barton and Viv Tuffnell, and I wondered if they would tell me that the key is not to question but to "know", whcih made me think "but I don't know". But maybe the answer is that it is the questionning - of ourselves, our lives, our world, that stops us from "know"ing what we have to do, and then giving ourselves to doing it. Maybe the answer lies in learning to know oneself well enough that one does not have to question - which sounds a lot like what I have said about confessional art and stripping everything to your most basic truth. I'm still not there, but maybe I'm startig to learn which questions not to ask. The fundaental mantra seems unchallengable, though, for us as artists:
"be spectacular"
Tuesday, 1 May 2012
Last Man Out of Eden - CD & pamphlet
So I've finally got some new work to show for myself. Last Man Out of Eden is a CD and pamphlet of performance pieces out on June 12th (which, coincidentally, is the date of the Hammer and Tongue final). It's a collection of poems about hope in the face of disappointment, with a
lyrical confessional style that takes in equal amounts from
Ferlinghetti, Tracey Emin, and Patti Smith’s Just Kids. These poems celebrate the healing powers of time, non-violence, and remembrance but above all carry a simple message:
Celebrate the lives of those you love because one day they won’t be with you any longer and you’ll be left writing poetry about how you wish you’d loved them more.
And here's the bit where I really need your help. I'll be recording the poems for the CD live and I need an audience. It will be at 7.30 on Friday June 8th at (of course) The Albion Beatnik Bookstore. If you think you can sit and whoop up some raucous applause through a set of 9 poems (it'll take 30-35 minutes) whilst being plied with wine, please come along!
Celebrate the lives of those you love because one day they won’t be with you any longer and you’ll be left writing poetry about how you wish you’d loved them more.
Monday, 2 April 2012
Poetry video: We Were Making Fairytales
…performed at ARTournament in Gloucester on April 2nd. Part of a new project about creative friendships inspired by Patti Smith’s Just Kids, Katelan Foisy’s Blood and Pudding, and a dear dear friend and collaborator of Katelan’s and mine.
Friday, 24 June 2011
You said "Pitch", right?
So, pitch can mean many things, but one of the many is musical. As I love music as much as if not more than books, and as it's an open secret that I would have been Jack White if it weren't for the fact I can't string two notes together and someone else got there first, here's the thing. I won't tell you what my books are about. You can read that elsewhere.
Anyway, because it's Glasto time and when I look at the shops full of festival wellies I really really wish I was there, and then I realise they're wellies and I'm quite glad I'm watching on TV, but anyway, this is my own personal literary pyramid stage.
These are pitches with a difference. Three songs per book that taken together pretty much give the feel of the book exactly. Like that feel and I almost guarantee you'll like the book. Don't like the music and that's no guarantee you won't love the book, of course. Links are to Kindle editions - remember, you don't need a Kindle to read Kindle books - simply download the free Kindle aopp on the book's page and in about 30 seconds you can read Kindle books on your iphone, Android, Mac orPC
Black Heart High
Kindle .com
Kindle UK
The Company of Fellows
Kindle .com
Kindle UK
Songs from the Other Side of the Wall
Kindle .com
Kindle UK
The Man Who Painted Agnieszka's Shoes
Kindle .com
Kindle UK
(life:) razorblades included
Kindle .com
Kindle UK
Anyway, because it's Glasto time and when I look at the shops full of festival wellies I really really wish I was there, and then I realise they're wellies and I'm quite glad I'm watching on TV, but anyway, this is my own personal literary pyramid stage.
These are pitches with a difference. Three songs per book that taken together pretty much give the feel of the book exactly. Like that feel and I almost guarantee you'll like the book. Don't like the music and that's no guarantee you won't love the book, of course. Links are to Kindle editions - remember, you don't need a Kindle to read Kindle books - simply download the free Kindle aopp on the book's page and in about 30 seconds you can read Kindle books on your iphone, Android, Mac orPC
Black Heart High
Kindle .com
Kindle UK
The Company of Fellows
Kindle .com
Kindle UK
Songs from the Other Side of the Wall
Kindle .com
Kindle UK
The Man Who Painted Agnieszka's Shoes
Kindle .com
Kindle UK
(life:) razorblades included
Kindle .com
Kindle UK
Wednesday, 9 June 2010
Life
My new book (life:) razorblades included is now on sale!!The chapbook, with a beautiful wraparound cover made from Daisy's stunning image (a photograph she took of herself as soon as she had finished reading the book), is just £5 + P&P.BUY THE BOOK HERE
Most of the content can be found online in various places, but the fully curated (i.e. I actually thought up an order that kind of reads like a journey. Or something), collection, with introduction, is just 99 cents, for all ebook formatsBUY THE EBOOK HERE
(cover image copyright Daisy Anne Gree)
That's the promo bit. What I wanted to share here is the introduction to the book, which explains why I put together the pieces I did, and left others out. Of course, I hope it makes you want to buy the book. But I hope it's also something to think about.
"live"
Camus was wrong. Whether or not to kill oneself is not the only question. That would be as absurd as those old romantic novels that ended at the altar, as ridiculous as Ewan MacGregor walking into the credits choosing life. The difficult question, the one that matters, the one we have to answer in the real world and not the halls of learning, is what the hell you do next once you’ve decided to live.
For all that so much of the material in this book deals with death, this is a book about life. It has two starting points, the two things we wake up to every day – that it would be so much easier not to open our eyes, but to lie back down and slowly forget to breathe; and that we do not. We take that magnificent, exhilarating, impossible, anarchic, destructive, mind-boggling, terrifying decision to live.
Choosing life does not mean oblating oneself on the altar of beige. To live, in the belief that it is somehow easier to do so than to die; to live, and to believe every obstacle is thereby behind us; these are acts of self-deception I long to able to perform, but can’t. For many many people, making the choice to live means a daily struggle with, and embracing of, pain, hurt, and helplessness.
This collection is about the full implication of what it means to live, not just to breathe, but to grapple again and again with the effortless simplicity of death and the impossibility of life, but to choose, again and again and again, the latter. To choose life is to choose the unpassable course. To choose life is to live at the edge of the map of the human soul, in a place where every eyeline looks beyond the horizon, and to continue into that hot, chill, black, burning bright unknown regardless. To choose life means, on occasion, to choose the unacceptable, the inconceivable, the immoral, the ridiculous.
My writing has been called bleak, dark, and bereft of joy and hope. The first two of these I will readily concede. The latter two, never. In a world where the default setting is vanilla, acceptance, expectation, normal; in a world where the tragic few who wrestle with life full-on and fail are condemned when it is not they who are too sick for the world, but the world too sick for them; in a world where the grey, suited swamp of the billion walking dead is revered; in this world, anyone or anything that celebrates the full, damaged, despairing, fucked-up and spectacular reality of life is a shriek, a shout, a holler of joy to pierce the eardrum of death.
Open up this book, take a deep breath of it into yourself and smell and taste and touch the words and let them graze the inside of your lungs. Fill your heart and your blood and your head with its oxygen, and go out and live.
For all that so much of the material in this book deals with death, this is a book about life. It has two starting points, the two things we wake up to every day – that it would be so much easier not to open our eyes, but to lie back down and slowly forget to breathe; and that we do not. We take that magnificent, exhilarating, impossible, anarchic, destructive, mind-boggling, terrifying decision to live.
Choosing life does not mean oblating oneself on the altar of beige. To live, in the belief that it is somehow easier to do so than to die; to live, and to believe every obstacle is thereby behind us; these are acts of self-deception I long to able to perform, but can’t. For many many people, making the choice to live means a daily struggle with, and embracing of, pain, hurt, and helplessness.
This collection is about the full implication of what it means to live, not just to breathe, but to grapple again and again with the effortless simplicity of death and the impossibility of life, but to choose, again and again and again, the latter. To choose life is to choose the unpassable course. To choose life is to live at the edge of the map of the human soul, in a place where every eyeline looks beyond the horizon, and to continue into that hot, chill, black, burning bright unknown regardless. To choose life means, on occasion, to choose the unacceptable, the inconceivable, the immoral, the ridiculous.
My writing has been called bleak, dark, and bereft of joy and hope. The first two of these I will readily concede. The latter two, never. In a world where the default setting is vanilla, acceptance, expectation, normal; in a world where the tragic few who wrestle with life full-on and fail are condemned when it is not they who are too sick for the world, but the world too sick for them; in a world where the grey, suited swamp of the billion walking dead is revered; in this world, anyone or anything that celebrates the full, damaged, despairing, fucked-up and spectacular reality of life is a shriek, a shout, a holler of joy to pierce the eardrum of death.
Open up this book, take a deep breath of it into yourself and smell and taste and touch the words and let them graze the inside of your lungs. Fill your heart and your blood and your head with its oxygen, and go out and live.
Saturday, 5 June 2010
(life:) razorblades included
My new book is almost here!!
(life:) razorblades included is now on sale!!
The chapbook, with a beautiful wraparound cover made from Daisy's stunning image (a photograph she took of herself as soon as she had finished reading the book), is just £5 + P&P.
BUY THE BOOK HERE
Most of the content can be found online in various places, but the fully curated (i.e. I actually thought up an order that kind of reads like a journey. Or something), collection, with introduction, is just 99 cents, for all ebook formats
BUY THE EBOOK HERE
A HUGE thanks to Daisy Anne Gree for the cover image (and a note to all that this doesn't mean that I've turned my back on Sarah as my lifelong cover designer!)
It will be published by eight cuts gallery press, which is part of my new eight cuts gallery project.
Please spread the word, and if you'd like to interview me about it or review it that would be fantastic. Here's what the blurb ni my press release thingy says:
“Die living” urges the dedication to (life:) razoblades included. But just what does it mean to “live”?
Camus was wrong. Whether or not to kill yourself is not the only question. It’s just the start. Dan Holloway’s first collection of poems and short stories ranges from the lyrical awake to the transgressive SKIN BOOK; the Beat-inspired adam to the blankness of The Last Fluffer in La La Land; but they are held together by a single theme. The decision to live. Not the happy ever after that comes when deliberation ends, but the beginning of the joyous, energising, enervating, exhilarating, immoral, implacable, impossible decision to wake up, open your eyes, and truly live, with all the exhilarating, nightmarish consequences that decision brings.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)