Saturday 12 March 2011

So, Up is Down and Down is Up

I am immersed, in an ongoing disconnect.

By habit, I am early riser writer. Happiest getting up around 6am, before the family and work start knocking my door. Yet here I am, after the 10pm point, listening to music via youtube (at this very moment Theo Parish's Soul Control), catching up on the previous day’s facebook action.

The reason why I am resorting to this strategy for my musical fix is because my personal laptop recently gave up the ghost. So, no spotify; no BBC I Player, no free rein downloading and a whole heap of corporate fire wall clogging my work computer. Lovely.

Still, I can write (naturally, I still have all my fingers), pick up e-mails and go on facebook in the evenings. And it does no harm for a writer not to get too comfortable, I hear.

The disconnect festers and forms around a particular image, of the broken trampoline currently littering the back garden. A casualty of the recent freak high winds, one if its arms has snapped clean in two, its metal skin folding like lips around the wound.

Speaking of which, we have two shows coming up soon. Both of which are outside our usual home patch of the North East and are in Leeds and York.

It is also the first time that we have done a collaborative venture, in this case with the brilliant Monkish Wordtank, and together we are putting on the Word Machine show at the York Theatre Royal on the 17th March.

It is going to be a mixture of performance/spoken word gems, some short films and a bunch of open mic sets. We are hoping that the local York scene have gotten wind of the night and are going to come down and raise hell.

It is inert. Rain water gathering within its black canvas and netting. A mouth in rigor. Mourners flank its sides. A colour bled slide, an overturned plastic house, various rain splashed small trucks and spades. All witnesses to the trampoline’s destruction and who still  keep a vigil on the corpse left behind in the wake.

To be honest, I am also selfishly hoping people are going to come along and watch us shake our collective tushes. Viv Wiggins and I are going to attempt to breathe new life into a piece called Muse which I wrote for Vol 2 of our zine “I’m Afraid of Everyone” and performed at our launch, a proper Ink/Tank cross over.

Equally weighing on our minds is a night we are organising with the Cadaverine Press for the Headingley Literary Festival on the 22nd. The Self 101: An Introduction to YOU will be our first event where we are doing the whole shebang in character and thematically linked.

The trampoline’s remaining arms stretch out into the black sky, occasionally shivering as a gust of wind artificially animates them. It is a pathetic spectacle, a last gasp and gesture towards the unknown source and force that crushed the purpose out of it, a cry of why directed into the cold, uncaring void.

All of our characters are pretty messed up. Mine is a particular self generated brand of self indulgence, misanthropy and rage. I have been using the music of Oxbow ((S Bar X) to transport me mentally into the right place in between rehearsals and to get the juices flowing. No holding back, no limits. Well… that’s the idea.

There will be live music provided by my brother, who plays in a local Leeds band I Concur and John has put together some stunning visuals for the night. We are hoping it will be as enlightening as it is disorientating and again any support you can give us with be greatly thanked.



Questions arise and are answered in an instant. Modern market forces dictate that that the trampoline is the product of the East and cheap labour. That it was probably air freighted over thousands of miles and arrived at this point as much a result of global economics as weather fronts, storms gathering over the Atlantic and finally the fatal attack on the inland terrain which has claimed at least, one inanimate object.

Following these events we will be throwing ourselves into Vol 3 of our zine, I’m Afraid of Everyone. Again, to banish any claims of complacency we have decided to make this zine an audio book, and on top of that one where all the parts work towards a collective whole, rather than a loose anthology of disparate pieces of fiction and art.

Next, it will be collected for scrap. Sieved and dismembered, its metal limbs and skeleton transported to a burning inferno to be partially reborn. Possibly as scaffolding, maybe as parts for a series of cars, or to form the lining for a communal urinal. Evolution and devolution. Frighteningly arbitrary.

At this point all we want from any would be contributors are some examples of your best work and once we have reviewed everything we have been sent we will pick out the writers who we feel will be the best fit for the zine and story.

We are starting to get vague notions of the influences for the world the zine will occupy. Through the works of JG Ballard (South Bank Documentary), dark dubstep perfected by the likes of Raime (This Foundary), the promise of a new documentary about WG Sebald (Brief Doc about Rings of Saturn) and films such as Dogtooth and Bergman’s Persona.

The rest of the body, butchered back into various pieces and forms of plastic, will be recycled or consigned to landfill. Possibly to be delivered and exported back to its country of birth, to be buried in a hill of regurgitated vomit, yards away from the houses of the people who built the original trampoline, or their family and friends.

We are hoping again that it will be a platform for creative collaboration, as we will be looking for actors to provide the voices of the characters and narration, music to provide a sonic landscape and for artists to design the sleeve of the finished article.

If you are interested drop us a line and/or send us examples of your work. If you think there are artists, film makers and musicians we should be checking out, let us know.

I am immersed, in an ongoing disconnect.

Wednesday 2 February 2011

New Red Dawn

KING INK 2011


So, a new year and a new chance to push things to the limit, bring ideas to fruition, wow the crowds or crash and burn in the process, sink into ignominy, end our days sleeping rough on dog shit stained park benches, dredging white lighting outside performance nights and screaming through blackened lungs and teeth at entering punters and performers, “Don’t get in there, that’s where dreams are destroyed!”.

All good stuff.

We have a bunch of shows lined up for the new year! In 2010 we had our first launch; this year we are going to concentrate on putting on ‘events’ i.e. shows with a theme and/or characters.

We will make these shows as mixed media orientated as possible. One of our biggest challenges is to develop and learn how to do this seamlessly and get the most out of current, available technology (i.e. on the cheap!).

So far we have the following lined up:

  • 17th March, Theatre Royal York: WORD MACHINE. In partnership with Monkfish Wordtank from Newcastle we are putting on a showcase of their work and ours along with a element of open mic and contributions from local York performance artists and writers.
  • 22nd March, Heart Centre, Headingley, Leeds: SELF 101: An Introduction to you. As part of the Headingley Literary Festival we are putting on a show in which visiting professors from The University of Freduberg carry out three weird and wonderful lectures into the self and consciousness.
  • June, The Arc, Stockton: SELF 101: An Introduction to you. Sometime in June (dates are being confirmed) we will bring the Contexts of the Self event to the Arc for a performance.
  • June, Middlesbrough, Literary Festival: Again, sometime in June we will be putting on a themed night for the Literary Festival, possibly horror based and we will put out something asking for contributions from people to perform, similar to the zine and the launch for Vol 2.

If you can get to any of these events, particularly York and Leeds then we would really appreciate it. If you live in Leeds or York please start passing the word around about them so we can get bums (not that your friends, peers colleagues are bums per say, maybe dregs but not bums) on seats and get feedback on the show.

Also this year, we will publish Vol 3 of the “I’m Afraid of Everyone,” only this time we are shaking things up, doing things a bit different. So we decided… (dunt dunt dah!) that Vol 3 will be an audio book! Yikes! How are we going to staple it?!?

Not only that, but it will have a narrative running throughout which we as King Ink will write. We will use this to create a ‘world’ within the audio book, and given our obsessions and interests you can probably guess it isn’t going to be a particularly pleasant one (but as usual there will be flashes of deepest, darkest humour).

Alongside the words, we may lay on some soundscapes, tones, scratchy analogue whines, bleats and bass murmurs. We hope to please, or perhaps contort the ears as much as the mind. To achieve this we plan to work with local musical talent.

We will be asking for guest contributors, who we will work with to create short stories or poems to illuminate and examine this world of ours, through pieces which add texture or focus on specific characters whom inhabit it.

So, if you want to contribute to Vol 3, here are some guidelines:

  • Can you please send two pieces of work (i.e. prose, poems), no more than 500 words each to showcase your writing. If you have done any audio book work or written any radio plays then please also send those, no more than 5 pages for each piece please.
  • All examples should be sent to us by the 30th April, you have until Midnight (moo hoo ha haa!) to send them to imafraidofeveryone@gmail.com.  
  • We will then review the examples, pick out the best work and get back to all successful contributors by the 30th June (or sooner, depending on how many contributions we receive), and will then confirm names on the blog on the same day.
  • Successful contributors will then work with us between June and the autumn to write and then record the pieces. Contributors will have the option of recording the work themselves or using actors (who we will drag of the street and then dispose of or keep in a cage in Tim’s basement if we feel they can be useful).
  • We will then aim for a launch in September, possibly with a performance of all or some of the pieces. The venue will be revealed closer to the time but it will be in the North East.

Lastly we are going to try to get a website set up over the next couple of months. We are being assisted with this by Mr Crash Raindog, who is dungeon master of the interweb and e-ternet and we are very grateful that he will be bringing his skills to the table to help move us to the next level. God bless you governor.

There will probably be other events and bits and pieces happening this year but we will keep you in the loop via the facebook page and the blog.

Please get involved, support us where you can and together lets make this a bloody good year before we all descend into the Mayan approved and pre-ordered apocalypse in 2012!

Whilst we wait for the flames to engulf our skin and souls, you can do no better than boogie down to the following pure classic album, Return to Cookie Mountain by TV on The Radio.


Released in 2006, which was a good year for apocalyptic pop (same year Liars released their seminal Drum is Not Dead), every track is a funky, noise behemoth, trading in every style from post punk, trip hop and even barbershop to make a cohesive, melancholy whole. 

"Open my heart and let it bleed on yours." Indeed.