reaction to videos

reaction to watching video for the first time:

0:08 -- 'why am i talking so quickly? calm down.'
0:18 -- 'just start reading.'
0:24 -- 'my posture is really bad. my neck. i am wearing the same 'costume' today as in the video.'
0:34 -- 'oh god.'
0:44 -- 'stand up straight.'
1:08 -- 'my voice sounds weird. oh god.'
1:15 -- 'is that Mark E. Smith in the bottom left photo?'
1:38 -- 'oh god, i can't watch this anymore.'
1:40 -- stopped watching.



reaction to watching video:

0:13 -- 'this is really professional.'
0:33 -- 'i feel nostalgic. Crossing Border was fun.'
1:10 -- 'i wasn't filmed much. maybe i'm not going to be in the video.'
1:39 -- 'oh, that's a Cass McCombs song.'
1:57 -- 'nice cover.'
2:47 -- 'oh, there i am in the background.'
3:17 -- 'Hester was cool. i like Hester.'
3:29 -- 'oh god.'
3:34 -- 'that was weird, when i read that bit at the school.'
3:49 -- 'i wish i understood Dutch.'
4:53 -- 'i like Cass McCombs. this is a strange song to feature, though.'
5:14 -- 'i guess they edited me out. probably because i sound like a twat.'
8:14 -- 'oh, there i am again in the background.'
8:48 -- 'i look like i'm asleep.'
9:10 -- 'oh god. shut up.'

let's get f***ing freaky

i have watched this video somewhere between 1 and 400 times.

i don't know what 'getting f***ing freaky' means.

does it mean one of the following things:

making a strange face and dancing in a stranger's bedroom on your own at a party, saying something to someone that you thought was funny until you started saying it but as you continue saying it realise will be met with either indifference or mild offence, purposefully giving a shopkeeper money using the least amount of coins possible even though your wallet is bulging with small change that you need to get rid of, making a sandwich you don't really want but just think that you should have and then trying to eat it and taking maybe one or two bites and then thowing it away, running the tap for a long time in order to get it really cold while thinking about water shortages in third world countries, passive-aggressively adding people you don't like on facebook/myspace/bebo/twitter, not shaking your penis properly after urinating and then walking down a corridor towards a room where you know you will sit down fully aware that there is a small amount of urine still remaining in your penis that will be expelled by sitting and that the feeling of the urine being expelled will be both pleasurable and shameful, texting a high resolution photo message of your penis to an ex-girlfriend with a word or a sentence written on it maybe something like 'forgive me' or 'i understand' or just 'Megan', sitting on the edge of a bed trying to turn a sock the right way out and thinking you've done it and then looking at the sock and the sock somehow still being inside-out, watching a You Tube clip of small Korean child taking part in a dancing competition on a mysteriously energetic and confusing game show and feeling uncomfortable and thinking something vague about innocence and exploitation and child pornography and then being distracted by a giant flashing Korean sentence frantically moving around the screen, being startled by a sudden violent horrific daydream when you are not a person with violent tendencies something very specific and realistic possibly involving nail scissors, leaving all the lettuce on your plate even though you really like lettuce, or putting on a scarf and taking a long time in the mirror adjusting it and making a face at yourself then carefully taking it off again.

does it just mean 'humping'?

i don't know.

loops

LOOPS is out now. it contains a mildly edited version of the Paul Simon chapbook i made last year. the website now features extracts from things and lists of stockists, etc.

i am teaching creative writing at a summer school at the moment. i've been reading books like The Art of Fiction, talking about conflict and plotting and style.

i feel scared of fiction at the moment.

i don't know.

that isn't true.

i feel sort of excited about fiction but like it has turned into something else.

i feel like i have lost about three years of confidence, like they went somewhere accidentally.

i made a stack of books on my coffee table the other day: Victoria, Adventures in the Skin Trade, The Catcher in the Rye, No One Belongs Here More Than You, Like Life.

i looked at them and wondered what it was i liked so much about them, if there was a connecting thing, how and if i could apply that to my own writing.

i thought something like, 'novels and short stories about young people / no real problems / existential crises / relationship problems / small things / banality / etc.'

The Bird Room was recently reviewed here -- it got 3 out of 10. the reviewer didn't like the fact that it was "a dark work of run-down-to-earth twenty-something existence, populated with uninteresting characters who spend their days blandly surfing the internet for porn, dragging themselves to the bar to socialise with other monosyllabic individuals, and working in dead-end jobs which they don't even aspire to build upon."

i read that part and thought, 'that sounds good. that sounds like something i would want to read.'

i don't know.