Money

I have no money. Apropos of my situation in general, I am not at all happy. In complete contradiction to my former statement, which was hyperbole, I do have some cash but only £23 pounds for the rest of the week; then £50, then £50... I neither know where the stuff goes nor derive any positive benefit from whatever journey it undertakes. Further, the fact that it undertakes said journey in Kingston (of all the towns in all the world) contrives to leave me even more embittered.

I really don't know what I'm doing anymore but I am tied to this wheel I am on by invisible threads of general ex-polytechnia. My mood will no doubt swing faster than a bye-election after a protest vote but I feel I must repeat, I don't know what I'm doing, what I've done, where I'm going or what I want... I don't want anybody's reassurances, I don't want anything; although a small part-time job could offset my immediate troubles, if not the general malaise... On top of all this, I feel like the biggest brat in all the world for complaining about my mediocre life while there are so many people in a much worse situation than I am; then again, if you can't moan on your blog, where can you moan?

A little moisture appeared around the visual organs today in the Abbey (a bank, not a place of worship), reading this from Edward Lear:

"They rode through the street, and they rode by the station,
They galloped away to the beautiful shore;
In silence they rode, and 'made no observation',
Save this: 'We will never go back any more!'
And still you might hear, till they rode out of hearing,
The Sugar-tongs snap, and the Crackers say 'crack!'
Till far in the distance their forms disappearing,
They faded away. - And they never came back!"

If only...

The Islanders

I went to an exhibition this week, Charles Avery's The Islanders at the Parasol Unit, near Old Street, London. I must confess, I am not usually the type who frequents galleries but I knew I had to make an exception for this exhibition.

To begin with, my friend and I were almost thwarted by the labyrinthine arrangement of roads outside the tube station. We headed one way, then another, then we went back down into the tube and up through a different exit, all to no avail. After we had repeated this procedure two or three times in the rain, I decided to make a couple of calls and thanks to the twin miracles of mobile telephonia and the internet we were guided up City Road, past McDonalds, to a little, inconspicuous-looking warehouse with a sign reading:

"Buzz for entry"

Trepidation and feelings of acute embarrassment usually prevent me from pressing other people's buzzers but, wet and more than slightly annoyed at how long it had taken to find the place, I decided to throw caution to the wind... The door released itself and we walked in.

The gallery was a typical clinical, white framing device; a space to allow the functioning of whatever art was placed within it. Immediately, I was drawn to a sketch and a small block of text on the wall directly in front of me. The text was an accurate imitation of the first page of a traveller's log as he arrives in an alien land and the picture was of said traveller and the first human being he encounters there. Meanwhile, across the room there were maps and charts and a geographical globe of Avery's other world; I was hooked!

The exhibition is described on the press release as "a meditation on making art and the impossibility of finding truth" but I think that is a far too wordy explanation for a genius venture back into the realm of the sandpit. When I was a young I used to undertake a hundred million expeditions to other lands in my parents' box garden but, every year, I lost a little piece of the spirit of imagination which enabled me to make the journey, until, one day, I had to save up and buy a painfully expensive plane ticket to do exactly the same thing...

Now, the above is not to belittle Avery's art in the least, as, with his references to Wittgenstein and his obvious debt to, among others, Thomas Moore, this four year work is no exercise in simplicity or anti-intellectualism. Instead, Avery has fused his interests, both the facets of child and adult in his brain and created something truly magical. The artist is multi-skilled and talented, accomplished in geometry, in sculpture, in life drawing, travel writing and, in the case of 'The Eternity Box', the art of optical illusion, too; all of which he puts to use to build his world.

'The Islanders' is an exhibition that truly deserves the epithet "sublime" for its ability to both inspire and terrify other creative people in equal measure. On the one hand, when such a fully-realised work exists, you have to ask yourself what is the point of even attempting to create anything else ever again? It is no exageration to say that very little could come anywhere near the broad sweep of Avery’s ambition or the skill of his execution. The point of renaissance men and other men of genius however, is not to put other artists off pursuing their dreams but, instead, show them the very limits of the possible thus freeing up their minds to unleash their full faculties.

If you haven’t clocked on already I am heavily recommending that everyone who reads this blog takes a visit to see The Islanders before they vanish on the eighth of November.

One more slap down from the arbiters of egotism

Another rejection today: a poem this time. My fault I suppose for submitting something I penned in a half hour, again to a web-based magazine. Although my poem had some “nice lines”, this particular editor, arbiter of my egotism was “not sure if (she) was following it as a whole”; a bit of a shame, as I worked very hard in keeping the piece in question unusually coherent...

The continual venture into the realm of rejection... er... continues

Today I received a rejection from a web-based magazine (which I will not be vulgar and name here, less my legions of fans bombard the editor with hatemail) for a short work of mine called "London Under". Before I collapse into a fit of protracted hysterics I'll include a few of the critical quotes from the letter, for posterity:

"Dear Mr. Hampton"... good. "Thank you for your submission"... good. "Although I enjoyed your story"... good; slightly ambivalent tone. "I'm afraid we will not be accepting your work for publication"... What in Heaven's name happened, it was all going so well?

Chin up I guess; it was only a throw away piece that I thought might suit a sci-fi fanzine...

One last thing, I was accused of having omitted "in short, elements of plot". Well, a) my piece did have plot it was just that plot elements related to possible future actions and a sensible reader would have inferred that these are probable, nay even definite actions. B) I can find you some Kafka that has no plot at all but is still very enjoyable, furthermore, it came up on my course the other day so it must be of academic worth, too.

For anyone interested in the story in question, I am sure it will appear in my collected works in a few years. All I can offer for the moment is a big, unprofessional raspberry directed at the editor of said magazine and the above cynical comments.

Don't expect another entry for a few days while I continue to reel from this philistinism!

Walter Mitty may have been on to something...

I once had a friend who, basically, lived a fiction. He was the ultimate J.D. Salinger / Keith Waterhouse character, except devoid of any endearing characteristics whatsoever. I had known him since childhood but we had drifted out of touch until I met him one morning on a train. At first he seemed totally different, a reformed character, an easy-going guy, albeit a little unfortunate (he was working as a post-boy and had been since he was fifteen) but this was, of course, just a part of his condition. We slipped into a routine where we would meet on the same early train every morning and the conversation developed to a point where we were considering sharing a flat together.

Around this time things began to unravel; it turned out he was “a little nervous of estate agents” and I ended up viewing several properties alone. In fact, now that I consider, I don’t think he was present at a single viewing. It was also at this time that the frequency and complexity of his self-promoting tales increased. He was “off to Turin next week, mate” or “travelling up to Manchester, you know, just to catch the game and do a bit of shopping”. Shopping? Manchester? It’s a four hour train journey, I thought. The game? As far as I was aware Manchester United games were expensive and inaccessible affairs. Occasionally he would flash me a ticket-stub or holiday snap (sans self) and allay my growing doubts about his sanity, at least for an afternoon.

In the end I called the whole thing off. I think it was when I asked him to go for a drink in town and he told me he couldn’t because he was “in his tracky bottoms” but I was welcome at his “local”, near the estate he lived on, a couple of miles walk from the train station. There is something about keeping company with a compulsive liar that makes you feel terrible, like you’re co-operating in the lies and that, somehow, you are the sick one. I just couldn’t handle it anymore.

Why am I thinking about all this tonight? Well, I’ve just been for dinner and, on the walk home, alone under the streetlamps, hearing distant shouts and roaring engines and thinking about this week’s uninspiring lectures and deathly silent seminars, I began to wonder which one of us was wrong! Yes, my friend, the habitual fantasist, did mess me around a little bit but at what cost? He didn’t defraud me of any money or defame my character; in truth, all his lies were self-referential.

On the other hand, I am no further forward than when I knew him: I am still studying in the same town, taking trains on the same railway line, thinking the same thoughts. In the intervening time I have travelled across the whole United States, been to Italy and lived, for the best part of a year, in Ireland, but I feel no different. I want to be a writer but I am getting nowhere. My friend had a little notebook where he was forever planning a script for the BBC (rather like Adrian Mole) but he seemed happy. When he was reeling off lists of his imaginary friends, he did it with a smile.

I am already self-absorbed but perhaps it would be better to go the whole hog and actually live in a fantasy world. I'm sure, whatever I built, it would be better than Surbiton...

Paisley, poetry and a vent of the spleen

Today I wrote an extended ode to Ian Paisley. I know that sounds rather strange but I have always found the ex-Northern Irish First Minister both curiously attractive and hopelessly repellent in equal measure.

Odes are very difficult to write as they follow the rhyme scheme "ababcdecde" which sounds simple enough, except it traps you into making certain connections and practically forbids you making others; "the tyranny of rhyme..." as a wiseman once said. Still, having ventured onto the heinous "Poetry.com" a few days ago just to see their three million, post-postmodernist freeverse poems, along with the encouraging welcome message:

"Hello NFHampton, you need 201 points to reach the next poet level of apprentice"

I am evermore of the opinion that the conventions of metre are not only useful but need to be adhered to, on pain of death. Poetry is a game but like the best games: Risk, Chess and Scrabble, it is one with strict rules and if people don't start waking up to this then somebody better bust out the Playdough!

Degrees of Irishness

There are those in New York City and elsewhere who describe themselves as Irish when, in fact, they have far less- genuine- Irish blood than I do! Yet, somehow, owning in varying degrees to proximity, history and my accursed accent, I am condemned to an overriding Englishness that is as crippling as it is perpetual. Maybe I haven't immersed myself particularly well in Irish culture (all the 'Danny boy' stuff, when done tongue-in-cheek by my fellow countrymen on St. Patrick's day, irks me something rotten) and, perhaps, I do not have such a claim to the heritage as my half-Irish Mother, my Uncle and my Aunt...

On the other hand, I did live in Ireland for the best part of a 2006 and have returned for extended periods since. Furthermore, The Cranberries, Duke Special and even Boyzone have reduced me to tears on seperate occasions... Still, short of a blood transfusion and a radical overhaul of my genome, nothing can make me more Irish! Meanwhile, over the Atlantic, I just know that some mixed-up Yankee-doodah is strolling around mouthing off about his great, great grandfather's Irish uncle, while sending a monthly cheque to Sinn Fein and doing an embarrassing impression of a leprechuan every time he meets a genuine Irishman. A very unjust state of affairs I must say...

Disillusionment with the Artform

I thought that nobody was writing poetry, that it was a dying art and I therefore had a free hand and could take time to hone my craft. I believed I was transmitting to a select group of people on one of the last available frequencies. I was pleased but I was complacent. Instead, it turns out that everybody and their uncle is broadcasting some kind of self-obsessed, semi-lyrical, mixed metaphor drivel with which they are clogging up the airwaves. All in all, I need to up my game pretty drastically if I don’t want to be caught with my metaphorical trousers around my figurative ankles. I feel like I’ve been striving to emulate Houdini all this time and, all the while, everyone else has been upstaging me, behaving like bloody Paul Daniels.

Humanity

There are times when it is just nice to feel human! Today was one of those pleasant but subtly wearing, wearying days; a day in which there was neither time nor budget for eating. It was cold, too, and my nose went a different colour (red) from my face (white). When I got home and lay back on the sofa, it began to dawn on me that something was missing. With a shock I realised it was all my little, colourful characteristic bits; my human bits...

Sometimes all it takes to seize back one’s humanity is a twenty pence tin of beans and a cup of tea. It’s true that at other times it takes considerably more: medication, drastic upheavals in geography, even lobotomies but thankfully, today was not one of those days!

N.F. Hampton: A brief character sketch

N. F. Hampton (7th August 1987 - ?) is an English poet and critic. In addition to a plethora of poetry submissions, Hampton writes and submits short stories to various Science Fiction magazines; a continual venture into the realms of rejection and dejection, as well as bitter letters to various literary journals.

Hampton's best known works include his pieces in ‘The Parishioner’- the Ash Vale parish magazine, as well as an article in the publication for ‘friends’ of the Imperial War Museum, an interview with the, now, Chancellor, Alistair Darling for ‘The Daily Mirror’ and a picture of a hungry hippo in ‘Playdays Magazine’. He has also self-published a book of his poems, ‘Airstrip Music’, a cynical and vitriolic critique of his worthless existence in the suburbs, juxtaposed with the fields of his childhood and his extended stays in south-west Ireland.

N.F. Hampton lives and studies in Kingston, Greater London; possibly one of the least inspiring towns in England (bar Aldershot, with which he is also unnecessarily familiar).