h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Dmitri, do you want us to write poems for the AWW that do make sense? Ones that are better than 'Elegy in a Country Churchyard?'

Or ones that would make good lyrics for a rock band? That might be fun.

Or ones that definitely don't make sense? I must and finish my poem that doesn't make sense.

MVP, I think you should feel free to write as much sense or nonsense as your heart desires.

Just want to say thanks for that link Dmitri. I think there's something to what that guy says ... I would classify my regular life as being very dream-like and I see myself in fact as to a great extent *creating* the reality I experience. Again there is a lot that can be said about this.

Thanks for that, Willem. I was reading, partly because of things I read on your thread, but I didn't want to interrupt the flow over there.

Whereas the flow over here is multidirectional, going in all places at once...

Yes, the bit about the turtles, that's funny.

Fascinating article, I am going to re read it.

I wouldn't like to get stuck in the dream world. I know people who do, can be quite scary.

This is back to neurology.

I've always been a dreamer, just my braintype I guess, like a way of seeing. I love peculiar juxtapositions of images, and the way that sometimes there's not a lot of difference between a dream and a waking state.

It's good to use the word juxtaposition. It makes me feel artistic. I attract crowds by using this word. And ...

hullo? hullo? anybody out there?

. Am I being stupid tonight?

Oh no! It's 9pm, and I must rescue Gray, my poor fellow on the bus in a reverie. I must create!

But what about my Glen Campbell documentary that is starting now on BBC4? Sorry Gray, you'll have to wait, my friend. You'll like the music, Thomas Gray might have liked it too.

I'm a rhinestone cowboy pom pom

Laters

Ah yes, I do like a bit of multidimensional juxtaposition. .

Good morning peoples of the snow, or not snow . To snow or not to snow, and what do I know about snow?



I just realised that the dream and the pattern of moment are closely related. Which is quite interesting really. Or not. .



Notes

What provoked this strange reverie which overcame Gray, on the tour bus that night? He was never one to indulge in the excesses of drugs or alcohol. He was teased of course, his friends would say 'Let us pray with St Gray', and yet he was admired for his discipline.

Perhaps it was the rigours of the road, the endless lights of alien cities, or the cacophonous hellsounds of his band mates jamming in the bus. Perhaps it was the stress of the stage, the expectations of the experience-hungry audience.

Gray himself has long since given up searching for the reasons, although the experience changed his life. All he remembers that he found a fork in the road, and he followed it, to find himself dancing erratically yet ecstatically across lit up borderlines, hearing colours in illogical timezones, eating pizza with jugglers, or being guided by operatic angels to the pure source of song.

tbc

what????

Ah, the beauty of dream. So what am I on about? erm, I have o idea, have to wait for Gray to tell me. . I just love the dream of dream, the wonder of dream, the childsplay simplicity of it all. Sort of thing, like, ah yes, and I haven't said juxtaposition for twenty minutes.

Juxtaposition.

Ah, that's better.

'the cacophonous hellsounds of his band mates jamming in the bus' I love it

I have never been on a tour bus, nor been in a band but I have lived in bedsits with house mates who liked to jam, cacophonous hellsounds, very apt

Bands do that. Choirs do that, too, when they're together. Start singing and making things up.

You know, they've probably been doing that since Noah was a pup. Here's how I know.

You know that silly song people up in the north of your country call 'the Yorkshire national anthem'? It was made up by a choir on a picnic. See, this shy guy and girl went off somewhere, and when they came back, somebody else teased them, 'Whar hast tha been since I saw thee?', and somebody started singing it to a hymn tune, and the rest is noisy history.

A pattern of the moment preserved in the amber of song. You had to have been there, you know...I'll bet Mary Jane blushed all the way home in the charabanc.

Then it sounded like this, at least, if the sheep sang it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z1zDB3nTF2Q

In 1970, some people Gray probably knew named Oddie recorded it with heavy guitar:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UYEBraJDXNw

Time passed. Brian Blessed was born. In Yorkshire, I'm guessing. And somebody wanted to update the song, so that a new generation would enjoy it. So here's Blessed rapping 'On Ilkla Moor Baht 'At':

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CMe47eST6qY

See? Even 19th-century jam sessions were good for something.

Here are the Ilkley Moor ducks:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ducks_on_Ilkla_Moor.jpg

Oh yes, groan, hellsounds. There are hellsounds, and there are bellsounds. Bellsounds are fine, mostly, although sometimes I find them weird, the sound of distant church bells carried on a wild wind can be lonesome.

And then the hellsounds, yes why does other peoples' music sound so weird through the wall? Even if it's really good music, it sounds weird through the wall, all you hear is the bass, boom boom into the night, help! let me out, there's a monster heartbeat trying to steal my soul.

. These days we are lucky, all our neighbours are quiet, and not young. . that's nice. All I have is my memories, and the fragments of a headache.



(drinks brandy)

(checks Ilkley Moor postings) (chokes on brandy)(sings along with sheep)(that's so funny)



How good it is to juxtapose without stress. We can leap freely from the river to the bridge, from the valley to the ridge, from the kettle to the fridge...

...from this to that, via Ilkley Moor (baht 'at).



And what I learned from the Bill Oddie link, how could I have not known???, is that the late great John Peel started his own record label called Dandelion???? I am amazed, here's me thinking I know anything at all about music. I know nothing. My life is changed. Now I need to find out anything and everything about Dandelion Records.



Notes

(it's too late to write, I can't see straight, but I think the message I am getting is that Gray left the band, because they were a rock n' roll band, and he started to write very peculiar psychedelic lyrics after his experience, which nobody understood, except for his neighbour, who grew a lot of spinach, and had three basset hounds.

What?? No! That's not the ending, but Gray did leave the band. I will write the riveting final chapter when I can see straight.

PS Looking forward to your poem, mvp, the one that doesn't make sense? hah! or so you say, ah yes but what is sense?

Also looking forward to mvp's poem and have been wondering if there has been any progress with her sexy scenes.

This is beause Vox arrived yesterday and I am now half way through.

Which made me think of mvp again, for a while I felt like I was overhearing a conversation and should have a notebook on me but it has settled into a 'night in with friends'

not sure how to explain that, change the dynamics, so not two people talking to each other on an adult phone line, to people discussing with each other

I am enjoying it. Despite the content I'm not finding it sexy or erotic, so far. It is like an evening in with friends, with wine and snacks talking about sex, fantasies and what turns us on.

Having had a yabber with Spiller,

I think I have pin pointed what I am really impressed with and what has kept me so engaged with Vox is that is purely a conversation between two people

I'm not sure that I would felt the same way if it hadn't been for the ford capri and campervan road trip to nowhere tangent of this thread. In which I spectaculary failed to come up with a single conversation between anyone...

Also the additional knowledge I am picking up about what it takes to write stuff

I thought you'd like that. It's a technical achievement, seems to me.

I loved the sheep singing 'On Ilkley Moor Baht'At'.

As for my poem that doesn't make sense, that was an attempt to respond to the January Create challenge, to write about a Christmas present - A87781585, by using some of cactuscafe's amazing ideas. But I started writing in rhyming verse, and it's getting a bit bogged down...

I wrote my sexy scene and floated it round my creative writing class, and some people said , so I've rewritten it. This is why I don't get very far.

oh mvp what was about it, if you care to share?

Do you feel like you are making progress generally,sometimes I worry that you are feeling disheartened

Evening all! Is that kettle on? mmm lovely

Actually, maybe something stronger . It's soooooo c-c-c-c-cold

Hmm, it must be tough in the world of writing, I think, to run your work past others, especially if they say they say yuk. .

It must be so great if someone you trust and respect says they really really like your work, though ...

...so I suppose there are always moments of light and moments of dark, and moments of dappled shadow, and moments of winter twilight leading to fragrant summer dawn, and moments of Blakean shafts of light with silhouette butterflies flying through them, what?? ... and moments of ..

.. getting into some light effects there ...

I'm not too worried about my sexy scene, because I've already gone back and rewritten it and the tutor said the second version was much better.

I think it's important to accept that 'there are always moments of light and moments of dark and moments of dappled shadow'. That's why one of my favourite poems is Gerard Manley-Hopkins 'Pied Beauty' http://www.bartleby.com/122/13.html

I like that poem, too, though I curse Anthony Burgess whenever I hear the name Gerard Manley Hopkins.

Do you know 'The Clockwork Testament'? He made that book too good.

http://footenotes.net/Pages/Burgess.htm

Thanks. I didn't know that book.

But I didn't much like 'The Wreck of the Deutchsland', because the fate of the nuns seems so much more important than the fate of everybody else.

It's beautiful, the Pied Beauty poem.

I remember reading it with my father, who was into Gerard Manley Hopkins. He could relate to the fact that Hopkins was a Jesuit priest and a poet, being a deep thinking lay reader church man and poet himself.

The way that Hopkins made language and metre his own, it might have been pretty radical at the time. I bet there were people around who said it wasn't proper poetry, probably said it was yuk in fact. teehee

I had no idea about the Clockwork Testament and the link with Anthony Burgess. How extraordinary.

Ah! Knowledge, knowledge!



The other day I was out walking ....

...good start ... fairly normal opening sentence ...

and I had this weird experience ....

... uh oh ....

I was gulping in the cold, cold air. There was snow turning to sleet, and all the trees were dripping.

I picked my way through twisty roots and snowdrops. I thought I was about to see an elf or sprite from the kingdom of Mossy Magicwood, but all I encountered was a buzzard perched on the fence.

I greeted it politely with my best smile. It wasn't that impressed, and flew away over a ploughed field.

I was considering how this field looked like chocolate cake with ice cream, because of the mix of earth and snow, but it was just a colour effect, I wouldn't want to eat it.

And at that moment I felt physically connected to my environment, there was no separation. It wasn't a particularly pleasant or unpleasant experience, it was just as it was.

It was more like a tangle of veins and roots and eyes and lichen and dirty boots, of seed and snow and wing and bud and sweat and cold fingers and wondering what's on TV tonight.

Even the absurdity of my own being had a physical place, my brain a tiny pulsing sensory jellyblob in amongst it all, with all its neurotic imaginings, and mystical musings, all its loving and losing and flipping and slipping, with all its yearning and burning, and musical intentions.