My Zap Years

Receiving an invitation to celebrate '25 Years of Cultural Innovation' at the Zap Club in Brighton has left me feeling a mixture of nostalgia and excitement. But I find I'm unsettled too - as if I've accidentally picked up an unwieldy mass of strangeness that I don't quite know what to do with - a bundle of odd things I had forgotten over the past quarter-century. (Something like: a tangle of fishing nets, tinsel and unspooled C90 cassette tape, smelling of seawater and stale beer...)

In those days (early 80s) the Zap Club was a venue for 'comedy, cabaret, poetry, film, installation, dancing, theatre, music, street art, pantomime, alternative circus' with much audience involvement, often cross-programming these genres - so an audience might experience a juggler, a comedian, a performance artist and a band all in one night. After a period based in various venues, two arches beneath the seafront road and right on the beach were converted to be a permanent home.



My Zap career began simply enough. I was watching a boxing match in my girlfriend's flat when Neil Butler, one of the Zap directors, ran to ask if I'd like to do some cleaning at the newly-opened club - he had seen a performance piece I'd done on a cleaning theme and thought the work would appeal to me. (This was very much the modus operandi of the organisation - getting mates and artists to do things rather than professionals. Recruiting an unemployed graduate who had once done a performance about cleaning, rather than, say, an actual cleaner, was one of the more normal business decisions.)

Aside: My cleaning performance was inspired by part-time office cleaning jobs I had whilst at college. The process appealed to me on many levels. Being in buildings after hours, not part of the real purpose of the place but a sort of nightside crew; the repetitive ritualistic actions; the occasional moments of surrealism, such as entering a floor that had until the previous night been full of desks, filing cabinets, shelves and the traces of people's lives (kids photos on partitions and comedy coffee cups) and finding it completely empty apart from 10 telephones on the carpet - the reality seemed like performance art, so turning it back into an artwork was tempting. I recall mixing a bucket of Alka Seltzer and drinking it, most of it going on the floor where various electrical items were lying; setting fire to a Christmas angel by fire-eating with methylated spirits; rainbow arcs of cleaning materials everywhere. No Health & Safety Risk Assessments in those days - just good honest entertainment.

I was the cleaner there for two years, my first full-time job. I also did maintenance, bar work, compering, performance, and publicity - the latter a mostly voluntary add-on which I have somehow parlayed into a career in marketing.

The cleaning part was occasionally challenging. Let me just say that I dealt with anything which might emerge from a human body, placed everywhere that such things don't belong. I must have swept up tons of broken glass and cigarette ash, leavened with the detritus of the Zap's peculiar programme: if the trash didn't include something like a sequinned jockstrap, 17 dead fish painted fluoresecent pink, and a broken euphonium, the previous night had probably been a private hire for an accountant's birthday party.

Amidst all of this I got to meet lots of great people, such as Kathy Acker, Pete McCarthy, Forced Entertainment, Ivor Cutler, Ken Campbell, Billy Childish, the People Show, dozens more. I got drunk, fell in and out of love, made lifelong friends, repainted the walls, killed rats, ruined a pair of Simon Fanshawe's trousers by leaving a freshly-painted table in a corridor, learned to be vaguely entertaining, improvised woodwork, poured drinks, ate microwaved lasagne and tomato crisps, helped present amazing acts, and cleaned up the next day.

It was an unforgettable time.

And yet I don't always put the Zap Club on my CV - sometimes that slot is filled with the blandly sinister 'Gresham Associates' (the off-the-shelf company name of the four directors who had invested to create the Club in its permament premises) coyly described as an 'arts organisation'. Somehow the Zap feels like a chink in my symbolic armour, like turning up for an interview in a standard suit and tie, but wearing mascara or riding a unicycle. My fear is that if I did list it, next to a string of local authorities and polytechnics, someday a Vice-Chancellor or somesuch would boomingly ask what this 'Zap Club' was all about. What would I describe? Hurling a burning sculpture into the sea, with artist Roland Miller and some men from an airgun club who had stopped in for a drink and become embroiled in a performace art spectacle? Attaching lychees to the outstretched fingers of a blindfolded audience member on one of Ian Smith's unwisely-named 'Abuse Nights' ('Hold out your fingers madam... here comes the eyeball')? Having a curiously normal conversation about Eastbourne with the (completely naked) Neo Naturists in the (ironically named that evening) dressing room? Or one of the weird nights?

And yet maybe I should mention it. Thinking about it now, that sprawling, UV-lit, Seven Hundred Drunken Nights period taught me a lot. From that crucible of hedonism, creativity, enterprise and fun I emerged with an unquenchable sense that the the show must and shall happen; even without boring things like budgets or plans, amazing unpredictable lovely things can be brought into being; take a bag of mad ideas and pursue them with utter conviction; even if you have no script for what you're going to say or do or why, you can walk on to the stage, do your three minutes,

provisionally

solve

the

equation

of

love.

1001 nights cast

I'll let this project explain itself:

In 1001 nights cast, Barbara Campbell performs a short text-based work each night for 1001 consecutive nights. The performance is relayed as a live webcast to anyone, anywhere, who is logged on to this website at the appointed time, that is, sunset at the artist’s location.

A frame story written by the artist introduces the project’s nightly performances. It is a survival story and it creates the context for subsequent stories generated daily through writer/performer collaborations made possible by the reach of the internet.

Each morning Barbara reads journalists’ reports covering events in the Middle East. She selects a prompt word or phrase that leaps from the page with generative potential. She renders the prompt in watercolour and posts it in its new pictorial form on the website. Participants write a story using that day’s prompt in a submission of up to 1001 words.

...so tonight, for instance, Barbara is reading a story by my ol' pal and Facebook revenant Tony White. To cap it all, tongue studs are involved also.

What are you waiting for - here it is: http://1001.net.au/index.shtml

Winterbirth by Brian Ruckley

Even if you have never read a western, I'm betting that if you picked one up and read an account of a cowboy riding into a mining town and walking into a saloon, you would get a clear sense of the environment being described and an expectation of the story, however sketchy the text was. That's because the western is a highly stylised form, with conventions reinforced by thousands of books, movies, parodies and so on - a gigantic shared world which author and reader can tap into at will. A lot of fantasy operates in a similar way: the Woods, Castles, Elves, Dragons come tumbling out of the box ready formed; a warrior walking into an alehouse needs as little embellishment as the cowboy entering the saloon to create an evocative scene, because we've all been to that same alehouse many times before.

And that's fine. But it's great to come across a fantasy that breaks the mold, whilst staying close to the roots of the genre. Winterbirth is one such and I'll be following the trilogy with interest. For me this was a really fresh read - although many of the expected elements of a fantasy trilogy are here, it comes across as a new creation - a world that has been crafted anew, rather than a retread of familiar elements.



Described by the author as 'epic heroic fantasy', it's a stirring tale of feuding clans and races, laced with treachery and intrigue, punctuated with powerful action scenes. The characters are well-realised, with believable motivations and personalities. There's a certain amount of ambiguity as characters follow their destinies with often violent results, but with a (nicely diverse) group of characters who one can empathise with as the heroes. However I suspect difficult moral choices await the younger characters who have followed a coming-of-age trajectory in this first volume.

Within the 'Godless World', the 'Black Road' is a well-realised theology that motivates one set of clans, a kind of fatalistic determinism similar to the Puritan concept of the Elect, a mixture of predestination and moral absolutism. Although the book is not an allegory of modern times, the exploration of a faith-based drive to conquest, and the politics that surround it, does have an unavoidable resonance with the contemporary world. I would be interested in understanding better the belief systems of the non-Black-Roaders.

Criticisms? I sometimes got my Thanes mixed up and had to use the table at the back to untangle the names. Similarly, some place names had a confusing similarity. But these are minor quibbles with an excellent first novel from an exciting new author.

(I have also written at insane length about the marketing of this book.)

Unfriendly Zen garden

Unfriendly Zen garden
Originally uploaded by my_genre_nation@btinternet.com

These were dotted around the roof space of a very nice restaurant I was taken to in Edinburgh. No sure what one isn't supposed to enter...

Must... obey...

It's interesting seeing which rules we decide to follow. Sometimes even the most anarchic or contrary people are fanatical about following certain rules.

Take 'Use By' dates on food. To me these are sacrosanct. I often creep down to the kitchen at midnight for a cull of the fridge and cupboards, to remove anything that is going out of date. I really believe that teams of scientists have worked out that a food product is perfectly safe to eat at 11.59, but as toxic as a test-tube full of ebola virus at 12.01 the next day.

Jennie, on the other hand, would happily eat a piece of pork that has been in the fridge for six months, on the basis that
- 'the dates are just a suggestion'
- 'it's been in the fridge, it'll be OK'
- 'they just put those dates on to make people waste food and buy more'
- 'it's going to be cooked before we eat it'.

And yet the same woman would buy a parking ticket 2 minutes before the free period starts, just in case the Man comes around.

It's madness, I tells ya.

Meeting writers: what's the etiquette?

In 1967, humourist Paul Jennings recounted attending a literary soiree where the presence of T.S. Eliot was the main attraction. 'In this room there should be the beating of eagles' wings. All the available poets in London are here, and there are some who have come in specially from Greek islands.' As he awaits the moment when he and his wife will be introduced to Eliot, Jennings ponders - 'Soon it will be our turn. What shall I say? You have formed my soul?'

I have yet to meet a writer who may have formed my soul. But I have met a few, and the problem of what to say is always there.

For me it all started in around 1967. I liked the Roger Moore Saint TV show, probably the first adult TV I ever watched, so I was excited when my dad said we were going to meet 'the man who writes The Saint books', one of his MENSA buddies. However, this was not Leslie Charteris, a somewhat exotic fellow who had 'prospected for gold, fished for pearls, worked in a tin mine and on a rubber plantation, toured England with a carnival, and [driven] a bus.' Rather, it was a man who collected music boxes, lived near Eastbourne, and had adapted some of the TV scripts for paperback publication. As a six-year-old I had little to say under these circumstances, so moment of tongue tied embarassment for both of us ensued.

Between then and now, I've crossed paths with authors a few times. These have rarely been memorable encounters (though I was apparently the first person to ask Hal Duncan for an autograph outside of an official signing event, and I did, heroically, manage to ask Paul Cornell a non-Doctor-Who question at a round table discussion.)

What approach should one take when meeting writers? I'd like to avoid
- producing the author's complete oeuvre for signing
- asking absurdly detailed questions, such as 'on page 148 of the second volume of the Gryphiad, Volus has a poniard but in the previous chapter he had a dagger - is this a clue to the fate of Ardrad?'
- coming across as over-friendly, eg blurting out an invitation for our families to go on holiday together
- making it seem all business - 'just sign the damn book, I'm going to sell it on Amazon (but I might wait until you're dead to bump up the value.) So no need to personalise it...'

I suppose none of the folks I've mentioned are household names. I did find myself standing next to Terry Pratchett at a bar once. Now many's the time I've heard people discussing Discworld stuff that is to me completely opaque, or (worse) listened to memorised passages being declaimed with humorous intent. I am not able to participate in this kind of thing. Had I spoken to Mr Pratchett (who, being admirably generous with his time, would I'm sure have responded) back then all I could have said would have been 'Hey Terry, I read a couple of yours once, can't remember much about them - is your recent stuff any good?' So I didn't bother and concentrated on catching the barmaid's eye instead. But! Having read a recent interview in Interzone, I would have something to say to the hat-wearing fan favourite! Turns out he too admires the work of Paul Jennings, a relatively forgotten humorous writer who wrote a column in The Observer in the 1950 and 1960s. (See what I did there?) Perhaps I could have started a conversation about Jennings' poetic flights of fancy. Did he remember "How to Spiel Halma" , Resistentialism, the Submerged Log Company? How about "The Dwarfs of Birmingham"? We could have had one of those annoyingly opaque-to-non-cognoscenti conversations, maybe even declaimed memorised passages... Perhaps next time.

Pretty (sad) in Pink

In the past month I've been to a wedding, a baptism and two funerals. Caught up in the vaster movements of life. A thread of pink has run through this time...

At the wedding, four of us had independently decided to wear pink shirts - victims of some random middle-aged fashion meme. This had the effect of making us look like
- an off-duty Irish Showband
- early arrivals for the Pride march
- bachelors who had yet to master seperating colours for washloads.
But it was a nice coincidence.



Today was the funeral for Neil (aka Frank), following his sad and sudden departure. One of his work colleagues spoke at the do afterwards, and among other reminiscences described how Neil would wear a pink shirt on the days when a big financial transaction got completed. (He was a finance director. I know little about the inner workings of financial organisations, but I get the impression of massively complicated, high-value processes converging on a big scary deadline. The wearing of a pink shirt at these times would therefore be an act of some panache.) This was followed by a toast - after which I noticed that the work people, male and female, had all donned pink shirts of some kind for the funeral. Not a coincidence, but a moving tribute.

I just hope I get remembered as wholeheartedly...