Monthly Archive for October, 2009

Visual karoake, or, what makes you think you’re so special?


published in From the Editor
on October 23, 2009
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Photo Credit Irish Times

Donald Mahoney, a regular contributor to Some Blind Alleys, has reported on something controversial in the world of art for the Irish Times.

I shall try to crudely paraphrase the piece. The Frieze Art Fair in London is well known, and there are lots of big-name artists selling work there at high prices. Three artists – who were officially given space at the Fair (under the title Copystand) – cloned a bunch of the art with “basic art supplies and unwanted scrap material.”

Copystand sold out; not so for the originals. And no wonder: the hack-job (and presumably this is the correct artistic term for it) in the image at the top of this post sold for £399 (I love that it was not rounded up to 400). The original, which used the New York Times instead of the Irish Times, was on sale for $90,000.

The artist who made the above clone, Jim Ricks, was working on another clone when he got “an unexpected visit from representatives of David Shrigley from the Copenhagen-based Galleri Nicolai Wallner as he was in the process of replication. They photographed Ricks’ work, bemused to learn how easy it was to clone the £4,000 original.”

(my italics)

A month of my life and the writing of John Steinbeck

Helen Chandler
published in Essays
on October 23, 2009
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I took some depressing photos of street signs and buildings and then sat on a wall by a parking lot and smoked a cigarette

I throw up rarely and with great distress. It feels so unnatural. I envy people who can stick their fingers into their throats and heave at will. They’ll instantly feel better.

The last time I threw up was earlier this summer and I was convinced my whiskey had been spiked. It probably hadn’t. A voice called from outside the toilet cubicle where I was slumped:

“Helen, your boyfriend’s waiting.”

I was choking on acidic juices. I struggled for air and began to panic. There was no air left in the universe. I grabbed for the lock on the door. There were tiny stars.

“Can you check again if she’s in there?” I heard him ask.

“I checked, darling, she’s not answering.”

I took long, greedy breaths, coughing and spitting and breathing. He wasn’t my boyfriend. I wasn’t ready to come out anyway – my stomach and oesophagus contracted in unison and I threw up more whiskey and bile.

Continue reading ‘A month of my life and the writing of John Steinbeck’

Recommended: The Wexford Festival Opera


published in From the Editor
on October 22, 2009
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Wexford

The Wexford Festival Opera has started, though it’s reduced its annual run from the usual eighteen days to twelve. There are some interesting items on the programme: particularly Maria Padilla, Donizetti’s least well-known masterpiece, The Ghosts of Versailles, which is a twentieth-century work, and a piano recital on Sunday, November 1.

The Wexford Festival Opera is worth attending. A lot of people think opera is boring and prefer the Dublin gig scene, which is essentially the same three sounds played by two thousand bands and singer/songwriters. And there’s nothing you can really say to change their minds. It doesn’t matter how many times you try to explain that the Dublin music scene is mostly derivative, incestuous, sentimental, tear-jerking pop, somebody will always be able to pick out two exactly similar pieces and find a way to argue that they have nothing at all in common.

Another problem is that opera in Dublin is often abbreviated, and the productions are a bit underwhelming (but they’re cheap), and it’s hard to find world-class singers. And the sudden proliferation of online opera and opera on DVD or in cinemas – mostly led by the Met – are naturally diluted, so they don’t really do it for first-timers. They are more for people who like opera already.

But the Wexford Festival is a great place to take someone who’s never been. If you are thinking about going to an opera for the first time, and can’t leave Ireland, you should start in Wexford, not Dublin. The Festival is fun, pretty varied, and there’s rarely anything boring.

The other thing about the Wexford Festival Opera is that it is the flagship event of the arts sector in Ireland. It is the most internationally renowned cultural event that takes place in Ireland. It’s hard to say whether this is because it is so good or that no other event produces anything good enough to be recognised internationally.

And more than that: it is an indicator of broad perception of and interest in the arts. And it has lopped off six days from its programme in order to avoid a deficit.

Negative, Ghostrider. The pattern is full.


published in From the Editor
on October 21, 2009
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The Autumn Course List is Closed

The Creative Writing 1 course starting Thursday, October 22, has filled, and that officially closes the autumn course list at Some Blind Alleys. Courses will pick up again in 2010 with the Winter/Spring 2010 course list. CW2 and CW3 courses will start in late January, and a new CW1 course will begin in February. A Masterclass on the personal essay will begin later in the year.

Thanks to all who have signed up. Apologies for the above image, and for this:

A word on the Banner Competition, and something to do on Wednesday night (with Tinderbox)


published in From the Editor
on October 20, 2009
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Next

Now that the launch is behind us, and the last Creative Writing Class of autumn is about to start, the focus has turned toward the Banner Competition. I want to make sure it goes well, because, firstly, Some Blind Alleys will wear these banners and buttons for at least six months, and secondly, because I’m paying 500 euro to the overall winner and 50 euro to the other five winners.

So the first thing I’m going to do is add some fine print, with sincere thanks to the few people who have handed in so far. This competition will go ahead with a minimum of fifty entrants. Anything under that, and it will be up to the discretion of the judges, which includes Claire Gallagher from Tinderbox (Claire designed the current banner) and the good folks at the Joinery, whether this goes ahead.

The story of the Banner Competition is well known to some of the regular readers. Originally the deadline was earlier, and there was no cash prize attached. When Claire suggested I might be accused of trying to get free branding, I immediately added the cash prize and moved the deadline back. The deadline is now November 10.

How do you win? Well, I’m only going to have a very peripheral role in the choosing of the longlist/shortlist for the Banner Competition. Since I cannot tell the difference between hideous colors and lovely colors, I should probably exempt myself completely. Since Claire can tell the difference, I’ll let her make the hard decisions. Claire will pick, I hope, a dozen or so to send to the Joinery, who will decide the six winners – the overall winner and the five runners-up.

The only thing I can offer by way of guidance (besides all the dimensions that are set out in the guidelines), is that black-and-white does not work, nor does an artsy photo with text applied to it (because I can do that). Other than that, it might be helpful to read some more of these entries, the stories and essays, and even some of the reviews, to get a feel for the site’s character. I want to avoid themes like serenity and fuzzy warmth, and I also want to avoid a kind of arch-seriousness, as well as pure gore. Anything else would be great.

The Banner Competition is the first step, I hope, in the long process of convincing visual artists that this site is for them as well as writers/translators. And I hope it works out. It would be a huge help if everyone could spread the word, or print this pdf and put it everywhere – cafes, cinemas, universities, bookshops, etc. If you have a color printer, even better.

Tinderbox is exhibiting for the first time at thisisnotashop, an art gallery in Smithfield. The exhibit is called Storytelling. Opening night is this Wednesday, and afterwards there are drinks at the Dice Bar. This means that Tinderbox has found a way to be more disgustingly artsy than even Some Blind Alleys: we had our launch in an art gallery, but we went to an old man pub afterwards. (In fairness to them, one expects to find art exhibits in art galleries.)

The exhibit runs until October 25. All details are available in the link.

One thing I mention to all contributors – be they writers or artists – is that Some Blind Alleys will gratefully support and promote you for as long as the journal exists. If you’re an artist and have an exhibit, I’ll mention it. If you’re a writer and get published somewhere nice, or get a book deal, or even if you decide to join the circus, I’ll say something about it. This isn’t because we’re buddies. This is because you put effort into work that was good enough to be published/exhibited in Some Blind Alleys, and you deserve reward.

Some Blind Alleys has – at present – no money to offer beyond the bits and pieces we’re giving out in competitions. This is an ugly, despicable, unfair model of rewarding contributors, but it is ubiquitous. The majority of literary journals stay alive on shoestring budgets by paying contributors copies and, maybe, a tiny, tiny honorarium.

I think this model is here to stay, and one could argue – even though I personally think it is bullshit – that publication in small non-paying journals is a stepping-stone for later publications in places that people read.

The truth is that ninety-nine percent of unpaid publications in the many thousand literary journals around the world (most of them in the US) are meaningless to the editors of the handful of good journals and magazines. They are also read by almost nobody. And they’re ugly. In these cases, it’s a pathetic symbiotic bloodsucking. The editor and writer congratulate themselves for a job poorly done, and with each exchange, their standards drop.

But Greg, you say, you run an obscure journal that doesn’t pay contributors.

This is not only ridiculously true, but perhaps evidence that contradiction is the essence of writing.

But I wouldn’t be going on at length about this if it weren’t my mission to change this. When I transformed Some Blind Alleys from a place for my best students to publish excerpts of work to an online journal that was open for submissions, I knew I’d have to temporarily rely on a model I despised – rewarding them with exposure rather than money. But with each new, quality contribution is published, we’re a step closer to that model’s eradication.

William Hazlitt (1778 – 1830), from “On the pleasure of hating”


published in Plugs
on October 19, 2009
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William HazlittAs to my old opinions, I am heartily sick of them. I have reason, for they have deceived me sadly. I was taught to think, and I was willing to believe, that genius was not a bawd, that virtue was not a mask, that liberty was not a name, that love had its seat in the human heart. Now I would care little if these words were struck out of the dictionary, or if I had never heard them. They are become to my ears a mockery and a dream. Instead of patriots and friends of freedom, I see nothing but the tyrant and the slave, the people linked with kings to rivet on the chains of despotism and superstition. I see folly join with knavery, and together make up public spirit and public opinions. - William Hazlitt

I have hated myself in all the objects of my hatreds; or, What now?


published in From the Editor
on October 19, 2009
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A Dark Wood

The launch of Some Blind Alleys went pretty well. Anne Enright made a nice, off-the-cuff speech. The Arts Council was in attendance; they were staggered by two things: a) the size of the crowd, and b) the age of the crowd. Agents and publishers/editors attended. The Irish Times wrote something up about it. This weekend, Some Blind Alleys got record traffic (for a weekend). Since Susan Leahy’s personal essay went up late Friday night, it has been viewed by 207 unique users (as I write this Monday morning at 7 a.m.), and the average time spent on that page is 4 minutes, 57 seconds.

Now what?

I’d like to take the self I had to create to write press releases and seek publicity, and who housed all my ambition for the night, and take him to a dark woods and mercifully strangle him to death, and bury him where no one will ever find him.

This self is a corrupted individual. Every day he lives he adds to evil.

Of course, there is no such thing as a second self, so I must find a way to purge the soot and agony out of my heart and lungs, and this will probably come in the form of a number of incomprehensible rants in the From the Editor column over the next few weeks.

I reiterated, at the launch, my desire to keep Some Blind Alleys short-lived. One of the reasons is that, as was quoted in the Irish Times, anything that is an “adversary to the status quo” has a short life ahead of it anyway, in a country where the status quo is run (one could argue that it runs itself, and that’s probably the truth) like a mafia. And eventually, inevitably, any kind of popularity turns vexation into affectation, and you, if you are Some Blind Alleys, become the Al Pacino of obscure online literary journals, playing to yourself – you become an expectation.

If you want, you can use a little newfound popularity to make friends. And making friends is the fastest way to achieve safe passage in the so-called arts world, but integration is dishonesty’s mainspring. It is also a quick way to the top, but nobody tells you there’s a glass ceiling for rats. They simply wish you’d act like one, so they can keep you where they can see you.

A sense of achievement – one might call this integration with oneself. One looks inside and says, Well done. And the inside looks back at you and says, You too. And then you are finished; you are ruined as an artist/editor/etc.

An artist proceeds in life with self-suspicion, a longing (in his or her art) for alienation. Collaboration is a threat; it creates laziness, it depletes urgency.

So, it’s back to work. A class starts this Thursday – Creative Writing 1 – and there are still spaces available. I plan on finally – this weekend – getting into submissions sent since September 18 (the contest deadline). I also need to generate some entries out of the interest I’ve got in the Banner Competition. So far, the Banner Competition page has been read over 3,000 times, but I’ve only got a handful of entries. In order to find a longlist, shortlist, and pay the cash prizes, I’ll need to get a lot more entries. But, well, that’s what press releases are for, I suppose. It’s probably too soon to strangle my evil self to death.

And as always, if you’re a writer, translator, visual artist, filmmaker, animator, please send work in.

The Birds, Gate Theatre


published in Column 2
on October 18, 2009
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I didn’t want to write this review. Not another hatchet job. There is enough negativity in the world. But then I received an email from the Gate boasting that Conor McPerson’s The Birds had a continued run and had (or, because it had) opened to critical acclaim. Surely this was not the same play I saw two Friday nights ago.

There is another reason I did not want to write this review. I have considerable fondness of McPherson and his work. He is, in my view, the drinker’s playwright – his work is full of boozing lads, philosophising and getting locked to the tune of a heavily run-down drum. There is much comedy, and McPherson, who holds a master’s in philosophy, handles, with a deft hand, grand themes without burdening the audience. This is no easy task. You feel enlightened and entertained all in the one sitting, like a school kid who has been tricked into learning.

There is, one could argue, a familiarity to his work: the sense of foreboding, the appearance of a strange character, the discussion on mortality, the funny melodrama, but these are usually well executed. This was not the case two Friday nights ago.

The Birds was originally a short story by Daphne du Maurier that Hitchcock, that old weirdo, hijacked and made into a masterpiece. Like Hitchcock, McPherson picks up where the original story left off. Three characters become marooned in a house under siege by a flock of wild angry birds. Every day the birds move out to the sea and sit menacingly on the surf. At night, enraged, they attack anything and everything.

The play is set in the house. During the day, the characters have the freedom to roam around the locality. At night, however, they must retreat to the house and listen to an endless barrage of maddening squawks. While this effect is created with some success, over time the birds become irrelevant. Towards the end actually, I forgot all about the fucking birds. The drama is centred around the characters. The play begins with a man and a woman. The woman is a writer who was on the way to visit her daughter. The man and woman fashion an existence of sorts out of this fate, foraging for food and all that. An accidental, obliging relationship. Then a beautiful young girl arrives. The girl falls for the man – she mentions the continuation of the human race – and the writer speaks of her jealousy in boring, monotone monologues. The appearance of a local farmer, driven mad by loneliness, pills and booze, casts doubt on the girl’s motivation. This turn of events ensures a twist, which culminates with all the impact of a mild fart.

By this time, I had lost all interest in the play. McPherson’s script turned to God and mortality, which I expected, but these themes seemed like forced provocation. In reality the connection was too tenuous. Though the acting and stage production were good, the play was so flawed and dull that a review of its quality as a production doesn’t seem fair to other plays with better scripts. -John McAuley

My obsession with endstations

Susan Leahy
published in Essays
on October 17, 2009
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My obsession with endstations

Two hundred and three of us sat in suits around the table. It was Thursday again. I watched Áron. He caressed his moustache as if he were Dalí. We both doodled. I told him about the Italian general who drove me home in his Jaguar.

“Is he the bald one?” Áron asked.

“Yes,” I said. Áron said the man was married. I shrugged. The general’s suits were impeccable. The chairman spoke on and on. We didn’t listen. Our ambassadors pretended to.

Áron was from Hungary. We sat behind our ambassadors every week in a great hall that had a thousand windows, in the Hofburg in Vienna, for meetings of an international organisation so full of self-importance that nobody realised it was known only to itself.

The Irish and Hungarian ambassadors were modest, and knew that we came from countries too small to have opinions that mattered, so neither Áron nor I paid much attention to what was said, other than to note that the Americans made a statement, which caused the Russians to object, after which the EU spoke – through Belgium, who held the presidency – and that the French clarified a point, which meant the British had to too, and finally the Azerbaijani ambassador intervened, which meant that the Armenian ambassador would finish the meeting with something disagreeable.

Continue reading ‘My obsession with endstations’

The Winners of the Some Blind Alleys Writing Competition are…


published in From the Editor
on October 17, 2009
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The Winners

The jury has decided. The winners have been announced. Some Blind Alleys congratulates the winners of the 2009 Writing Competition.

The Winners of the 2009

Some Blind Alleys

Writing Competition

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Essay

Susan Leahy, “My obsession with endstations”

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Translation

Nora Butler, “The Crooked Hat” by Kurt Tucholsky

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Short Story

Cathy Sweeney, “The coin machine”