So, have I kept you in suspense for long enough?
"Oh yes wise one, please tell us why these four books are integral to the development of Doubtless Wonder!"
Very well then. Let's begin.
Tricked By Alex Robinson is a black and white slice of life indie novel from the author of Box Office Poison. It's reminiscent of those 1990's indie films where Ethan Hawke is stylishly mopey, Winona Ryder is mopily stylish and they all meet up in fraught, frequently violent circumstances at the end. (although now that I think of it, I can't name a single example of the genre, so maybe it just reminds me of the sort of films they should have been making but never got round to. Anyway...). We meet a blocked ex-rock star, his cute, naive muse, a slightly overweight waitress with commitment issues, a forger who works for a Russian mobster autographing baseball memorabilia and of course, the fat obsessive off-his-meds fanboy who hears secret messages in the singers' work. Which naturally tell him to KILL KILL KIIIILL!!! Of course, the maddest character in the book is the most interesting, but the others are all pretty likable and well drawn and written, and the violent climax is nerve jangling in a low key, indie kind of way.
The Ring is an adaptation of the novel by Koji Suzuki, although from memory it seems closer to the straightforward movie versions, adding the mother/son pairing from the American remake in place of the original Japanese male journalist and losing most of the weirder aspects of the novel. (Again, It's been a while since I read the novels, but I think there was more to The Ring than what we get in the movies and comic adaptation. By the time of Loop, Spiral and Birthday, the whole idea of a malevolent psychic has been left light years behind in favour of intelligent viruses and recursive metafiction). The artwork is a little uninspired, suffering from the generic similarity which can often make all manga look alike to Occidental eyes (although I wonder; do Western comics look the same to Oriental audiences? There's an obvious difference between the works of Bill Sienkiewicz and Mike McMahon, for example, but what about the solid yet uninspired superhero work of Val Semeiks, Tom Raney or Jim Balent?) So anyway, psychic corpse imprints unadulterated hatred on conveniently recording VCR and creates a cursed videotape which dooms anyone who watches it, yadda yadda yadda. Between the workmanlike art and the over-familiarity of the plot, it left me almost completely underwhelmed. The only stylistic flourish which did work was the artist's habit of occasionally drawing the main characters without eyes, but I'd be at a loss to explain why they did it that way...
Deathnote is more manga, but where The Ring was too safe and familiar, volume one of the epic Deathnote series actually seems like something new (despite being about five year sold). A deathnote is a notebook which allows the bearer to cause - and dictate the circumstances of - anyone's death. Write their name in the book and they die of a heart attack. Write a more detailed description and the events will, for the most part, come to pass. The owner of this particular deathnote is Ryuk, a Shinigami (God of death, demon type deal), but when he apparently loses it in the human world, it's picked up by studious teenager Light. Realising the power of the deathnote, Light promptly sets about wiping out the criminal element which plagues the modern world while trying to stay one step ahead of the mysterious detective L. Light is almost insufferably smug, while L is possibly even worse, but the art is nice and distinctive, Ryuk is fun and the whole Emo element (I have so much power, it's so heavy, woe is me...) makes a nice change from curses and psychic schoolgirls.
Finally, Testament is the 22 issue comic book series by counter-cultural commentator Douglas Rushkoff and a slew of artists, most notably Liam Sharp. Retelling archetypal bible tales in a near future setting, Rushkoff unleashes a slightly heavy-handed broadside of religious posturing and deliberate provocation (Astarte and Shiva spend a whole issue screwing, for example). Talk of cumming, God's dick and techno whores is slightly let down by the fact that only Frank Miller and Brian Bolland can get away with genitalia in a book published by (Time Warner subsidiary) DC Comics, so for all the filthy words, every picture of sex and nudity is partially covered by conveniently drifting smoke, waving scarves or panel borders. Similarly, the plot (several good gods struggle against their opposite numbers to create a living bible, rewriting it as they go and allowing the real world human protagonists to do the same, hacking reality as they go) is slightly less than the sum of it's parts. Think about it for too long and it all falls apart, but for the 22 issues it's a pretty wild ride. The last couple of issues are less satisfying - The series was cancelled so there's a definite sense of Rushkoff struggling to tie up all the plot threads way ahead of time. Sharp's art is similarly weaker towards the end, lacking a lot of the fine detail seen in the first story arc, but as one of the more under-rated artists working in mainstream comics even his weaker output is well worth a look (and he's a really nice guy too).
And all that says what exactly about Doubtless Wonder? Well, look at the connection between all four: Aggressive media.
Tricked - Rock and pop songs containing hidden messages (real or imagined) which tell troubled souls what to do.
The Ring - A videotape which kills its viewers.
Deathnote - A book which kills anyone named in its pages,in the way specified.
Testament - A book which warps reality, past and present, to reflect the latest rewrite.
In each of the four, the media becomes more aggressive, more pro-active and with wider reaching effects. The songs in Tricked only work on one, admittedly mental, listener. The Ring videotape will work on anyone who watches it, but can't force you to press play. The Deathnote can affect anyone within certain parameters but requires a degree of direction before it can work it's magic. The Testament Bible is formed by the random acts of a million people and will feed those acts back to affect their lives, their past present and future lives and the lives of the deities they worship.
So, with thoughts of aggressive media in mind, we have to ask, is Doubtless Wonder about one of these strange artifacts, or is it an artifact in and of itself? Does it tell the story of an art form with the power to change reality, or is that what it is?
That's up to you to decide, but one other thing all four of those books had in common - Every piece of aggressive media has an effect. Even if you survive the encounter, you will never be the same again.
Cheers,
Karl
Thursday, 28 May 2009
Wednesday, 27 May 2009
Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes...
So, those of you who are paying attention (and somebody must be, surely?) will have noticed that the non-fiction pieces have all been deleted from the main site and moved across here to the notes. We chatted a few nights back and decided that this would preserve the purity and focus of the main site and give us a wider range of nonsense over here. Think of the Doubtless Wonder blog as a strange new form of life, gradually developing to confound various branches of science and religion, with the notes site as a loose collection of musings from interested parties, all attempting to map the emerging forms and predict their eventual shape.
Or not.
For now, simply understand this : In the last week or so, I have read the following comicbooks:
Testament by Douglas Rushkoff, Liam Sharp and others
Deathnote Volume 1 : Boredom by Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata
The Ring Volume 1 by Misao Inagaki and Hiroshi Takahashi (Adapted from the novel by Koji Suzuki)
Tricked by Alex Robinson
And as wildly disparate as they might seem, those four books all have something important to say about where Doubtless Wonder is going and what it will do when it gets there. Muse on that for the time being and I'll return tomorrow to explain.
Cheers,
Karl
Or not.
For now, simply understand this : In the last week or so, I have read the following comicbooks:
Testament by Douglas Rushkoff, Liam Sharp and others
Deathnote Volume 1 : Boredom by Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata
The Ring Volume 1 by Misao Inagaki and Hiroshi Takahashi (Adapted from the novel by Koji Suzuki)
Tricked by Alex Robinson
And as wildly disparate as they might seem, those four books all have something important to say about where Doubtless Wonder is going and what it will do when it gets there. Muse on that for the time being and I'll return tomorrow to explain.
Cheers,
Karl
Annotations - Little Boy Blue
Okay, here we go with the annotations. This references both earlier and later pieces, most of which have yet to see print here, so I've had to chop a lot out of the notes for the time being. Instead, you get a bit of an insight into the brain as it attempts to make sense of he whole thing. No chance.
In this piece I'm laying the groundwork for another DW concept - Monk Blue as Christ The Redeemer. Maybe. Little Boy Blue is the old nursery rhyme which goes:
Little boy blue, come blow your horn.
The sheep's in the meadow, the cow's in the corn.
Where's the boy who looks after the sheep?
Under the haystack, fast asleep.
Will you wake him? No, not I
For if I do he's sure to cry.
A bit of a stretch maybe, but here's my reasoning - Monk is a man of the cloth. He has the power to reanimate dead matter and to create new life (the sand city in this very tale). Little Boy Blue looks after the sheep, while Christ is frequently referred to as a shepherd of men. Basically, the rhyme says that the world is going to hell, cows and sheep causing mayhem etc, while the shepherd (or more likely, the shepherd's son...) is fast asleep, buried. And when we wake him, he will kick up a ruckus the likes of which we've never heard before. Armageddon baby! Of course, Phil's long term plans for the character may be completely at odds withthis, and my own thoughts can change byy the minute, so this may never be touched on again...
It's not named, but this takes place on Glenelg Beach in Southern Australia. Blue is Australian, which allows him to be a little less brash and a little closer to the very English Fliss but still participate in Nam etc. Blue is a popular Aussie nickname of course. Glenelg Beach is where the Beaumont Children were last seen in 1966, their disappearance sparking four decades of debate and speculation in Oz. This ties into the mention of children on the English moors - At the same time as the Beaumonts went missing, police were closing in on the moors murderers. This puts us squarely in late 65, early 66. As this wasn't as obvious as I'd hoped without some of the other peieces to reinforce the idea, I've also given Norris an extra line about putting a man on the moon.
Ern Malley - A famous Australian controversy surrounding the publication of poems by the late Mr Malley. Met with rapturous approval by the literatti of the day, the poems were later revealed to be the work of two disgruntled poets who created a fictional life for their tortured genius and intentionally wrote the worst poetry they could imagine, just for a laugh. A book of poems by an author who doesn't exist - A DW idea if ever I heard one...
Blue builds a castle... This is another one of those surprise moments, where what I'm thinking and what I'm typing go in two completely different directions. There was never any indication of this when I thought up the plot, but here it is.
Morgan T Norris - Psycho Killer. And once it was out of control, this really got away from me. Norris was going to be a throwaway character who would pop up, initiate Blue with a forced jellyfish sting then bugger off, never to be seen again. I made him dress in black because I thought it made him sinister, I gave him the knife to make him more menacing and I made him bald because xxxxx xxxxx xxxx xxxxx xxx and it made me chuckle. I was up to the point where he kills all the fish before I realised that he was Death with a capital D, and I had to reread it to see that, yes, I'd actually written him as Death from the start. He even looks like the classic Bergman version, updated for a night out in the 21st Century. Truly odd.
And yes, that mention of Psycho Killer should really be followed by Qu'est Que Ce...
So Death and Christ sit in the classic lotus position, facing each other across the clay The Redeemer has raised to life. Norris clearly knows everything there is to know about Blue, and he knows that he's infected. He begins the long, slow process of waking Blue, firstly by forcibly ejecting the toxins from his body. The clear goop is meant to evoke Morrison's Magic Mirror substance, but this is a twisted, distorted version of it, controlling and subduing its vessels.
I like the fact that Blue is almost completely powerless in this passage, and that the mention of the Moors children has set the reader up for some really nasty business, but in fact, Death is here to help. I also think that the moments when Blue is unconscious are the moments when his mum goes. Norris flashes the knife after he's used it (instead of a scythe) to keep Blue away from the body until the lesson is done.
God, The Devil and James Bond - Strange in DW that a boy would think of these three, then ask instead, "Are you my dad?" It's the return of the abandoned child with parental issues! Norris's response suggests that Blue Snr was no prize catch either.
Do you ever feel like you've done everything there is to do at least twice? - When I wrote this, I was beginning to wonder whether Norris was really an alternate future Blue. (and strangely, that was phil's reading of the character too). Now I think it just makes him sound old and tired. He stands at the edge of the land and daydreams about how it will all end.
I spent about three nights rewriting the dialogue for the next few paragraphs. Hendrix, Nixon, Kennedy and the moon landings all came ino it at different times. I suddenly realised that I had no clue what Norris was really here for, what he was going to tell Blue. Finally, I realised that he didn't know either - It was just a vague warning. Things got a bit easier then.
Old men wandering home, children playing out in the sun - Three of them will go from this very beach. - That's xxx xxx xxxxxxxxx, and the Beaumont Children, gone without a trace.
every stoner in the free world will be looking to the skies and singing Good Morning Starshine, actually inviting them to come and make contact with you - Good Morning Starshine is from the musical Hair, which didn't exist untill 1967. And the whole idea of singing it while looking to the stars for UFOs comes from the crossover X-Files/Simpsons episode where Mr Burns gets mistaken for an alien...
the man who called himself Norris felt compelled to look away - Little Blue has the power to face down Death.
That's right little monk - This is the first time Blue is ever called by that name. Norris knows the man he will become.
And that's about all I can give you for now - There's more going on here than I can readily reveal in the annotations, with stuff that won't be touched upon for another six months or more.
(Originally Published 19/05/09)
Annotations for In A Lonely Place
I’m not sure about the exact date on this piece. I think it must have been written sometime in 2003.
The title references Joy Division’s In A Lonely Place, one of the last tracks written by Ian Curtis before he committed suicide in 1980. New Order re-recorded the track and placed it as a B side for the single release of Ceremony (another Joy Division track re-recorded by New Order).
I have some sort of fixation with telegraph wires, electricity pylons, communication masts, satellite dishes and aerials (please note our DB profile image). I’m still trying to put my finger on why I suffer this affliction; I’m not sure if I really want to know – but the problem still persists. Hence, the telegraph wire in In A Lonely Place. The hanging corpses are, yet again, in reference to Ian Curtis’ suicide.
I’ve had an unhealthy interest in military history, in particular World War II, since my Dad introduced me to old war movies like; In Which We Serve, The Wooden Horse, The Dam Busters, The Colditz Story, The Battle of the River Plate, The Bridge on the River Kwai, The Enemy Below, The Longest Day, The Hill and Where Eagles Dare. I then faithfully followed, on a weekly basis, heroic adventuring in Victor and Commando comics and more recently in Garth Ennis’ War Stories, Enemy Ace and First Flight of the Phantom Eagle. Thus, Stalingrad fell into my personal research remit back in 2003. I had been reading Antony Beevor’s Stalingrad and I thought this, particular campaign, would fit nicely within the world of Doubtless Wonder.
The MP35 or Machine Pistole 35 was the main SMG (sub machine gun) of the Waffen SS and some Wermacht units.
Having read IALP again, there is a lot hidden within the piece that I can’t annotate at this time. I don’t want to give too much away.
Cheers
Phil
(Originally Published 07/05/09)
The title references Joy Division’s In A Lonely Place, one of the last tracks written by Ian Curtis before he committed suicide in 1980. New Order re-recorded the track and placed it as a B side for the single release of Ceremony (another Joy Division track re-recorded by New Order).
I have some sort of fixation with telegraph wires, electricity pylons, communication masts, satellite dishes and aerials (please note our DB profile image). I’m still trying to put my finger on why I suffer this affliction; I’m not sure if I really want to know – but the problem still persists. Hence, the telegraph wire in In A Lonely Place. The hanging corpses are, yet again, in reference to Ian Curtis’ suicide.
I’ve had an unhealthy interest in military history, in particular World War II, since my Dad introduced me to old war movies like; In Which We Serve, The Wooden Horse, The Dam Busters, The Colditz Story, The Battle of the River Plate, The Bridge on the River Kwai, The Enemy Below, The Longest Day, The Hill and Where Eagles Dare. I then faithfully followed, on a weekly basis, heroic adventuring in Victor and Commando comics and more recently in Garth Ennis’ War Stories, Enemy Ace and First Flight of the Phantom Eagle. Thus, Stalingrad fell into my personal research remit back in 2003. I had been reading Antony Beevor’s Stalingrad and I thought this, particular campaign, would fit nicely within the world of Doubtless Wonder.
The MP35 or Machine Pistole 35 was the main SMG (sub machine gun) of the Waffen SS and some Wermacht units.
Having read IALP again, there is a lot hidden within the piece that I can’t annotate at this time. I don’t want to give too much away.
Cheers
Phil
(Originally Published 07/05/09)
Theme From A Lost Spy Movie?
Okay, time for one short message to introduce the third member of our merry band. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Mr Craig P. Sinclair:
(Originally published 06/05/09)
Yay! Woo!
Late of this parish, Mr Sinclair moved on to pastures new in the heart of the city and now spends his time writing surreal plays about beekeepers, directing short films about urban witchcraft and honing his skills as the musical genius behind acclaimed Scouse Victorian Goth merchants Lovecraft. He has also been known to play live with Zombina & The Skeletones, but under an assumed name and so much makeup that no-one's actually sure if he's still in the band or not.
For our purposes though, all you need to know is that he was the first test subject for Doubtless Wonder and allowed the festering mess to infect his brain until he began to produce themes for the main characters (like the one you are currently listening to - Miss Felicity's Theme) and gloriously deranged collages, the most family friendly of which currently sits at the top of this page. He will no doubt provide us with many more wonderful works, and we will repay his kindness by stealing his name and his likeness and plastering them all over Soho's most insalubrious phone booths.
And all in time for his birthday.
(Originally published 06/05/09)
Annotations - String Theory and the Immaculate Conception of Imogen Dangerfield
This piece was written on the day of posting and is a reaction to the previous - Woman of Mass Destruction chapter by Karl.
It's wonderful how these chapters bounce off and collide with each other.
STatICoID also introduces characters, locations, groups and incidents that date back to the inception of Doubtless Wonder in the early 1990's.
The piece is split into three differing time frames and locations, spread out over 15 years. However, the incidents occur within only minutes of each other on a linear timeline. This brings into play the notion of Cause and Effect. Each incident is carried into the next, almost like a narrative relay race, and creates the relational Causality. I'll post some links to Causality philosophy on our sister website(Notes on the Sublime).
The line "Imogen Dangerfield wept salty tears on the edge of the chemical soaked embankment" relates to an actual location within Widnes, Cheshire known as The Bongs. The Bongs (An Olde Cheshire name for light wood) acts as a natural border between Western and Eastern Widnes and is intersected by the Bowers Brook, which opens directly into the River Mersey. About 15 to 20 years ago the brook was used as a chemical waste outlet for local industry and it was not uncommon for it to change colour on a daily basis. The nearby embankment was also covered in an oily film, that when stepped on, would leave a multi coloured footprint. Hence, "the chemical soaked embankment". The Liverpool - Manchester line runs through the northern section of The Bongs. It is also worth noting that the original screenplay and short movie for Doubtless Wonder was going to be filmed on The Bongs back in the early to mid 90's. I'm sure Karl has some recce photo's, from the period, stashed away somewhere...
Thollon-le-Baines is a corruption of Thollon-le-Memises and Evian-le-Baines. It's a wonderful location set between the French Alps and Lake Geneva. It was also the location for Mr and Mrs Roberts' Honeymoon in 2004. Incidentally, Evian is the source for Evian mineral water and the location for the 2003 G8 Summit. Does this have something to do with Imogen Dangerfield?
The man in fatigues talks to someone called 'Swedish'. Look out for Swedish in further chapters.
'Colonel Blue' is Monk Blue's rank within the SAF. Yet again, the SAF will be explained in further chapters. I don't want to give too much away here.
The final incident is set within a high school mathematics lesson. This harks back to the original birthplace of Doubtless Wonder. Where two young idealists dragged DW into the expectant arms of our current dimension space.
'The Red City' is another name for the Moroccan City of Marrakesh. This relates directly to 'The Marrakesh Express' in WOMD.
The Dandelion Brigade is a specialist detachment of the SAF (see prior comments for SAF).
The Algebraic equation here, is actually a String Theory equation for motion. For more info on String Theory, look at: Notes on the Sublime.
Well there we have it. We just have to wait for the next installment. In the meantime, check out our sister blog; Notes on the Sublime-Comments on Doubtless Wonder.
Cheers
Phil
(Originally Published 21/04/09)
It's wonderful how these chapters bounce off and collide with each other.
STatICoID also introduces characters, locations, groups and incidents that date back to the inception of Doubtless Wonder in the early 1990's.
The piece is split into three differing time frames and locations, spread out over 15 years. However, the incidents occur within only minutes of each other on a linear timeline. This brings into play the notion of Cause and Effect. Each incident is carried into the next, almost like a narrative relay race, and creates the relational Causality. I'll post some links to Causality philosophy on our sister website(Notes on the Sublime).
The line "Imogen Dangerfield wept salty tears on the edge of the chemical soaked embankment" relates to an actual location within Widnes, Cheshire known as The Bongs. The Bongs (An Olde Cheshire name for light wood) acts as a natural border between Western and Eastern Widnes and is intersected by the Bowers Brook, which opens directly into the River Mersey. About 15 to 20 years ago the brook was used as a chemical waste outlet for local industry and it was not uncommon for it to change colour on a daily basis. The nearby embankment was also covered in an oily film, that when stepped on, would leave a multi coloured footprint. Hence, "the chemical soaked embankment". The Liverpool - Manchester line runs through the northern section of The Bongs. It is also worth noting that the original screenplay and short movie for Doubtless Wonder was going to be filmed on The Bongs back in the early to mid 90's. I'm sure Karl has some recce photo's, from the period, stashed away somewhere...
Thollon-le-Baines is a corruption of Thollon-le-Memises and Evian-le-Baines. It's a wonderful location set between the French Alps and Lake Geneva. It was also the location for Mr and Mrs Roberts' Honeymoon in 2004. Incidentally, Evian is the source for Evian mineral water and the location for the 2003 G8 Summit. Does this have something to do with Imogen Dangerfield?
The man in fatigues talks to someone called 'Swedish'. Look out for Swedish in further chapters.
'Colonel Blue' is Monk Blue's rank within the SAF. Yet again, the SAF will be explained in further chapters. I don't want to give too much away here.
The final incident is set within a high school mathematics lesson. This harks back to the original birthplace of Doubtless Wonder. Where two young idealists dragged DW into the expectant arms of our current dimension space.
'The Red City' is another name for the Moroccan City of Marrakesh. This relates directly to 'The Marrakesh Express' in WOMD.
The Dandelion Brigade is a specialist detachment of the SAF (see prior comments for SAF).
The Algebraic equation here, is actually a String Theory equation for motion. For more info on String Theory, look at: Notes on the Sublime.
Well there we have it. We just have to wait for the next installment. In the meantime, check out our sister blog; Notes on the Sublime-Comments on Doubtless Wonder.
Cheers
Phil
(Originally Published 21/04/09)
Annotations : Woman Of Mass Destruction
So, the first couple of pieces are up and digging for something to write about while we wait for next weekend, when we get the next chapter, I thought again about the annotations I used to put together. These are a sort of a DVD extra, alternate ending kind of deal; I've redacted a couple of spoilers here and there so we don't ruin the whole arc plot inthe first couple of weeks, but otherwise, this is exactly as it was at the time. I don't necessarily agree with half the ideas in here now, and I'm not sure where most of the plot threads were leading, but they're an interesting glimpse into the mind of the writer a day or so after the chapter itself was finished. What's most interesting to me is the stuff that I only pulled out on reading the finished chapter, the stuff I included in the writing without even realising it was there....
Obviously, MB think’s he’s Galactus at the start here, with FM as his Silver Surfer. He’s part Spider Jerusalem, part HST in this episode, raving and staggering like a king hell acid fiend. The dress, qat and Allah references all place us somewhere in the Arab states.
Pictures Of Lilly – The Who. A young man obsessing over a dead woman – Foreshadowing later moments, or telling us something now about FM? Also, John C Lilly was a contemporary of Leary who wrote the classic texts on isolation tanks and ketamine use. He also wrote a lot on the possible communication between human and dolphin, which may also turn up in later stories. Ketamine is often used as a battlefield tranquiliser, especially in developing nations, so its purchase here is in keeping with current usage.
Poppy field – opiates are still a major source of income in the Afghan mountain towns.
Dotar – an Afghan stringed instrument usually played at weddings. Afghan folk/classical music has no tradition of mourning/funerary music, so the use here suggests that the things in the station have taken part in a marriage of sorts, though clearly less than happy.
Dari – again, the predominant language in the Afghan mountains.
I am travel weary… This paraphrases a poem by Jami, a 13th century Sufi mystic poet. Basically, a traveller arrives in a teeming city and wonders how he’ll recognise himself in the morning. He ties a pumpkin to his ankle, but when he wakes, a beggar has stolen it and tied it to their own leg. The wanderer exclaims, if I’m me, who are you, and if you’re me, then who am I? Much Sufi poetry deals with the impermanence of identity, with the idea that we’re all part of the deity, so arbitrary distinctions such as you, me, us and them are illusory. We are all part of the greater being, like the thing in the station. That could mean that FM and MB are part of a greater whole, or that FM kills god, depending on your point of view here.
The Beloved is all that lives… A line from the multi-volume epic poem written by Rumi, another Sufi poet from the 15th century, widely regarded as the Persian Qu’ran (it does have a name, but I can neither recall nor pronounce it…). Again, the lover is revealed as simply an extension of the divine, with all love truly owing to the creator. But is FM referring to the man or herself here?
The scene of MB writing FM’s true name in the sand – This is another steal from the Jami poem referenced above. A young man writes his lover’s name in the sand again and again, an epic novel which no-one will ever read. The name is as unreal and brief as the lover and the love. The only thing which truly exists is the sand and the wind. This also ties into xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, as well as further foreshadowing a possible death.
The Marrakesh Express – Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. The classic song about travelling to the Middle East in search of heavy medicine and enlightenment – Is that what we’ve found here? Also, as with The Who track, this firmly places MB in the late 60s, early 70s.
The latex mask – Just to suggest that the FM who was scarred by the man is NOT the FM who kills him, and also riffing on the old Mission Impossible series, where the super secret agents wore rubber masks to do their dastardly deeds in the name of Nixon’s government.
I’ve also got a back-story for the thing in the station, but whether we’ll ever get to it…
And that's it for now. Check back later and I might get round to introducing our special guest artist / composer. Or not.
Cheers,
Karl
(Originally Published 16/04/09)
Obviously, MB think’s he’s Galactus at the start here, with FM as his Silver Surfer. He’s part Spider Jerusalem, part HST in this episode, raving and staggering like a king hell acid fiend. The dress, qat and Allah references all place us somewhere in the Arab states.
Pictures Of Lilly – The Who. A young man obsessing over a dead woman – Foreshadowing later moments, or telling us something now about FM? Also, John C Lilly was a contemporary of Leary who wrote the classic texts on isolation tanks and ketamine use. He also wrote a lot on the possible communication between human and dolphin, which may also turn up in later stories. Ketamine is often used as a battlefield tranquiliser, especially in developing nations, so its purchase here is in keeping with current usage.
Poppy field – opiates are still a major source of income in the Afghan mountain towns.
Dotar – an Afghan stringed instrument usually played at weddings. Afghan folk/classical music has no tradition of mourning/funerary music, so the use here suggests that the things in the station have taken part in a marriage of sorts, though clearly less than happy.
Dari – again, the predominant language in the Afghan mountains.
I am travel weary… This paraphrases a poem by Jami, a 13th century Sufi mystic poet. Basically, a traveller arrives in a teeming city and wonders how he’ll recognise himself in the morning. He ties a pumpkin to his ankle, but when he wakes, a beggar has stolen it and tied it to their own leg. The wanderer exclaims, if I’m me, who are you, and if you’re me, then who am I? Much Sufi poetry deals with the impermanence of identity, with the idea that we’re all part of the deity, so arbitrary distinctions such as you, me, us and them are illusory. We are all part of the greater being, like the thing in the station. That could mean that FM and MB are part of a greater whole, or that FM kills god, depending on your point of view here.
The Beloved is all that lives… A line from the multi-volume epic poem written by Rumi, another Sufi poet from the 15th century, widely regarded as the Persian Qu’ran (it does have a name, but I can neither recall nor pronounce it…). Again, the lover is revealed as simply an extension of the divine, with all love truly owing to the creator. But is FM referring to the man or herself here?
The scene of MB writing FM’s true name in the sand – This is another steal from the Jami poem referenced above. A young man writes his lover’s name in the sand again and again, an epic novel which no-one will ever read. The name is as unreal and brief as the lover and the love. The only thing which truly exists is the sand and the wind. This also ties into xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, as well as further foreshadowing a possible death.
The Marrakesh Express – Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. The classic song about travelling to the Middle East in search of heavy medicine and enlightenment – Is that what we’ve found here? Also, as with The Who track, this firmly places MB in the late 60s, early 70s.
The latex mask – Just to suggest that the FM who was scarred by the man is NOT the FM who kills him, and also riffing on the old Mission Impossible series, where the super secret agents wore rubber masks to do their dastardly deeds in the name of Nixon’s government.
I’ve also got a back-story for the thing in the station, but whether we’ll ever get to it…
And that's it for now. Check back later and I might get round to introducing our special guest artist / composer. Or not.
Cheers,
Karl
(Originally Published 16/04/09)
Author's Note : Everything That Happens...
...Will Happen Today.
Which is probably rather unlikely, seeing as there's only about an hour of it left. Still, one thing which will happen is that the epic Doubtless Wonder will finally be unleashed upon an unsuspecting world. And that's about as close to Everything as you can get.
But what a long, strange trip it's been. Way back at the dawn of the second Summer Of Love, when clothes were baggy and the Stone Roses were the hot young things, a couple of Northern schoolboys decided that rather than pay attention in Maths class, they would instead spend their time in pursuit of far loftier ideals, like the creation of a completely new universe and the ceaseless psychological torture of the fat kid at the next desk. We broke him in a week, but the universe took a little longer to assemble.
Starting out as a hazy, drug-soaked riff on Alice In Wonderland, Doubtless Wonder was a fairly straightforward tale: Swallowing an experimental halucinogenic, a young woman finds herself trapped in a nightmare world of crazed fishermen, sword-wielding David Bowie clones and robotic policemen. Simple.
But while the plot was too small, the ideas were probably too big for us to do them justice at the time. We thought we knew it all and that we could express it in a better way than anyone else ever had, but looking back on photos from the time we were little more than babies. Judging from some of the fragments that remain of this and other great projects, we were dour, earnest, hopelessly in thrall to Philip K Dick and JRR Tolkien and possessed of that special strain of pretentiousness that can only be found in wannabe teenage poet-warriors. I can't speak for Phil, but I know that I was so bad I thought Jim Morrison had a really, y' know, incisive grasp of, like, the human condition.
Sweet Jesus....
So time passed and things changed. Jobs came and went, girlfriends too (and lets face it, how earnest can a warrior poet be once he's finally got his end away? Lets see My Chemical Romance weep on stage when they've all been blown in the dressing room - The best they'd manage is a guitar-heavy rendition of I'd Like To Teach The World To Sing...). College, university, psychotic breakdowns and trips to Amsterdam all left their marks on us and our little shared world. Phil made short films and worked as a runner for one of the more embarrassing hair metal bands (and I'm too much of a gentleman to say which one, but if you pester him enough he might let it slip). I wrote a Brit-pop vampire screenplay called Live Forever and a mutant police procedural in which everyone was dying of the plague, neither of which went anywhere, mostly because I didn't have the balls to show them to anyone beyond my immediate friends and family. Every so often, we'd get together, shoot the shit and reminisce about the great, lost works of our youth; Bloodstock. Limelight. And what was that wierd thing with the fishman?
Oh yeah. Doubtless Wonder. What was that about again?
Sometime around the turn of the millenium I moved down to Essex to be with the great love of my life. At the time the internet was something that other people had, so we would have to settle for snail mail to stay in touch and we decided that we would send something more than the usual Hi, hello, how are you? We would start to write a lengthy, episodic tale, each responding to the other's chapter until we had a whole novel to start shipping round publishers. We'd both hit 25 by this point (Phil was all grown up, with a house and a dog and everything), so time was ticking by and if we wanted to write the first great English novel of the 21st century then we had to get started pretty sharpish. Phil's first piece features Monk Blue and Felicity Makeshift as terrorists blowing up schools. Mine features Storm Thorgerson and sigil magic. Before we know it, we're back in Doubtless Wonder. It seems that ten or so years of neglect had turned it into some sort of wierd fictional graveyard where all the unfinished stories dragged themselves off to to die. Arihaily was in there somewhere, various vampires and superheroes, pretty much anything we had ever intended to write. We had a whole world full of ideas that were crossing and colliding in strange new ways, sparking off each other and sending ripples outward through everything we did. It couldn't fail.
So naturally, we ran out of steam after about 5 chapters.
Flash forward another couple of years. I'm moving back to the North to find a job and a house because the prices in Essex were ridiculous (This was around March 2003 - God knows what they're like now). Phil has the house to himself and works bizarre shifts and agrees to let me crash there for as long as it takes. In the end, I'm there about a month and a half, and in all that time we see each other for more than five minutes maybe half a dozen times. Other than that we leave each other cakes and cryptic messages in the kitchen and try not to get in the way. When we do get together we watch documentaries about the siege at Waco, eat lots of nachos and talk about what might have been. Bloodstock. Limelight. And what was that crazy thing with the terrorists?
And then one day, I sit down at Phil's new PC, tear my eyes away from the amazing new world of internet porn (my far better half had handed her notice in at this point but was still trapped in Chelmsford for several weeks so don't judge me too harshly) and I start to write. I don't actually know which one of us suggested it, or whether my piece came first or not, but I remember the thrill of creation, of actually doing it. When Phil got home, there was a small pile of A4 next to the danish pastry I'd left in the kitchen. When I got up the next day, not too long after he had gone to bed, I found a similar sheaf of paper next to my bedroom door.
A month later, we printed everything we had and laid it out on the living room carpet. If we put this piece first, then this one, then that one... But what about this one? Where does the poem fit? The Japanese advertisement? The transcript of intercepted messages between Midge and Swedish Chainsaw?
Somehow, in the same way that a house full of women are said to gradually synchronise their cycles with that of the dominant female, we had both fallen into the same rhythm. Something about the concept allowed us to write entirely separate from each other but develope the same themes and ideas. We could take those chapters and assemble them into something far greater than either of us had previously considered; a patchwork novel of conflicting voices, hearsay and advertising jingles which would gradually coalesce into the story of three generations of outright crazy people and their connection to the strange realm of Doubtless Wonder.
And then the real world gets in the way. Again.
Another few years pass. We change jobs, repeatedly. We both get married. I buy a house, Phil becomes a father, I follow him a couple of years later. Sometime around 2007, we're talking. Bloodstock. Limelight. That mosaic novel thing, what was it?
Another dozen or so pieces appear in a flurry of activity. I start to work out the main themes in my pieces and obsessively annotate them, looking for points of reference, different ways in and out of the story. I rewrite old pieces as if they were 1960s underground comix, then write them again as kitchen sink alien invasion tales. I throw in every half-baked notion I've ever wanted to write about; my new found vegetarianism, my flirtation with buddhism and my thoughts about my father. And music. Always with the music. The day Tony Wilson dies I write him into a chapter. John Peel's in there too, along with My Sweet Lord and Freddy And The Dreamers.
There's a website and a myspace page, I steal the name of my cousin's band for a group of 70s stoners, then cheekily ask him to write some songs for them. Fliss and Monk get their own theme tunes and I start looking into print on demand services. All of a sudden finding a publisher doesn't seem like a concern, and making a profit never was. We can upload everything to a site like Lulu and let people make their own minds up whether to buy it or just read it for free on our own website. More pieces follow, layering in different levels of reality, divergent timelines and multiple identities. Song lyrics, photos, the beginnings of a screenplay.
And then it's dark, for a long time. Stuff happens, life drags along, nothing gets written. We mothball the website and take down the myspace page. There's one last effort at rallying the troops, previewing a few pieces under an assumed name on Urbis, and the results are encouraging but it's not enough. Doubtless Wonder dies a fourth time, leaving behind a trail of incoherent emails and a couple of nice collages that were intended for the dust jacket.
Felicity Makeshift is dead. Long live Felicity Makeshift.
And then last Friday night we went to see David Byrne at the Liverpool Philharmonic. Taking a pre-gig drink or two, we got to talking. Same as it ever was: Limelight. Bloodstock. Yadda yadda yadda.
But what if? And how about? And then?
And within an hour or so, we were back. It's about 20 years since we created this crazy little world (and about 18 since we last saw David Byrne) and a lot has happened in that time, but some things never change. The buzz of working out each new link in the chain is as strong as ever. Doubtless Wonder is the puzzle we've been trying to solve for all of our adult lives. Pretty much every idea we've ever had has come from those fertile grounds, however remote they may seem at times, and every path we've taken has somehow lead back there.
So here it is. The earliest pieces date back to the end of the last century, while the most recent is being written even as I type this. In between, there are dozens of fragments which gradually add up to tell the tales of Marg Cornell, Felicity Makeshift, Monk Blue, Harry Love and countless others whose lives are touched by Wonder. Every other Saturday, somewhere between the end of Doctor Who and the stroke of midnight, one of us will post a new piece on here. Between each piece we'll be popping back to see what's happening. If you want to discuss hidden references, plot developments, secret identities or major influences then this is the place to do it. We're more than happy to talk to anyone who reads our work, and if you want to go off topic and recommend films, books and music that might go down well then feel free. We'll probably go OT quite often ourselves to tell you about films we've seen, places we've taken the kids, the latest comics we've bought and the blogs we're reading. And if you just want to wade in and trash the great endeavour then go for it - I'm pretty sure it's tough enough to outlast us all now.
Cheers,
Karl
(Originally Published 05/04/09)
Wednesday, 20 May 2009
Tuesday, 19 May 2009
Friday, 1 May 2009
UFO Observation at 23:12
May 1st, 23:12, Warrington, Cheshire
The wife and I have just observed 5 orange lights travelling in the sky over Great Sankey, Warrington, Cheshire. The first 3 were in a triangle formation at first, the back 2 then went into a straight line, followed by another 2 in a straight line. There was no noise, they moved silently and disappeared slowly, as if going into cloud cover and never re-appearing. They first appeared to be fireworks or flares, but followed a formation and were definitely neither. Never seen anything like this ever.
Phil and Karen
The wife and I have just observed 5 orange lights travelling in the sky over Great Sankey, Warrington, Cheshire. The first 3 were in a triangle formation at first, the back 2 then went into a straight line, followed by another 2 in a straight line. There was no noise, they moved silently and disappeared slowly, as if going into cloud cover and never re-appearing. They first appeared to be fireworks or flares, but followed a formation and were definitely neither. Never seen anything like this ever.
Phil and Karen
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