Neutral Spine

Just so I can stop thinking about it. It is actually boring now I say. I think I even mean it. Errata say that she definitely didn't lose her virginity when she was 9 in the treehouse, he just put it in. That doesn't count does it? We disagree and agree all at once. Since then, since before I think. In a clammy old garage I looked up in the sky and whispered to him: Hello boy I say, I wonder where you are? We write lists of every boy we ever fucked but they blow away over the balcony into the pool.

Mum and her straight back. Good posture like me, she say. Ballerina style. She walked up and down with Bird. Bird was 3 days old and knew it, but not much else. My tits were hard as toads. My daughter is usually as thin as me, say ma. Look at her now! E-normous! she say. I blink but I am cut in half and can't feel much else. The dads kept coming in to see the mums. My mum brought me walnuts. She gave me these cups that go in your bra. They catch the milk she say. Drip, when your baby cries, they drip. I won't manage I say. Don't be stupid she say, you just do. You're not the first woman to have a baby AND YOU CERTAINLY WON'T BE THE LAST.

I stare at families like they are fish. I watch them drinking tea from each other. Here and there a man lifts a child high on his shoulders. Definitely more family than me and my 1.2, the missing element of husband. Husband. Yes, but is he husband material the girls say. I say well yes, he is made of matter- he is husband substance. They are bored of my unravelling. The villa is throbbing with chat and the linear equations are all wrong. I am pinned onto the holiday like an example of a badly tied bow-tie, the anti-princess. I am stuck in the cinderella phase, my glass shoe fogged up.

MILF. You're a MILF they say. Thanks I say. Men like it, the milkiness. I am the Lady of the House of Sleep, good and bad. Bird is the real child though, and that upsets them. The magazines say if they love you they will love your child. That's a lie but I haven't the heart to tell 'em. It is bound up with the equations and hard to put a finger on. Love is like time, and people know fuck all about time. It moves in the same way and is unreachable. The girls don't believe me, they think I am on the unravel again, childish. I probably am.

Smiffy follow-up

If you enjoyed the interview with John Smith we featured last month then you may be pleased to note that several more videos of the folk guitarist and singer - performing tracks from his second album, Map Or Direction - have recently appeared online.

Here's my favourite, an unexpected cover of 'Not Over Yet' by Olive.



See all John's vid-wids here.

Hold the phone...

Two weeks since last post... busy times... a summary if you will:

1. My Geppetto

We've had another of these bad boys, this time by me, since we spoke to John Smith. Here it is in Flatline issue 6 (aka Mercy Magazine, resurrected as a weekly e-zine).

Flatline issue 7, featuring Gary Daly in the Geppetto hot seat, should be available any minute now. Sign up to the mailing list on Mercyonline if you want to be the first to get your digital mitts on it is also available now.

2. Mercy Live

Bluecoat poet-in-residence and Mercy creative mainstay Nathan Jones is performing at Greenroom in Manchester tonight. The event, Emergency 09, is on for two days, consisting basically of artistic wizards of every stripe descending on a little indie theatre, nestled in the arches below Oxford Road station, to do their thang. Nathan and co - he's accompanied by Karen McCleod, Shelly Atton and Gavin Osborn, who have worked his poem 'Language Stuffs Life' up into something more than your common or garden poetry reading - have a 20 minute slot in the venue's 'Workspace', starting at 8.30pm.

Details of Emergency 09 in it's entirety can be found on the Greenroom website.

3. Mercy Live (again, sort of)

Liverpool types keep your eyes peeled for Chapter&Verse, the Bluecoat's annual festival of all things literary. Mr Jones crops up again performing his poems, and discussing what makes them tick, on Oct 16, while our old faves Tim Clare and Ross Sutherland are up from Cambridge to perform Infinite Lives, a poetry show / lecture / anecdotal ramble about video games, the day after. (If you like Charlie Brooker's Gameswipe, these guys got there first.)

There's lots more besides - Tim is hosting an 'in conversation' event with Brit comedy legend Vic Reeves (Oct 16) , and Nathan and Ross crop up again with 'Revolutions In Form', a showcase of what's new in poetry besides the old poetry/hip hop sort of guff they like to drip over on Newsnight Review.

The full Chapter&Verse programme is here (PDF).

Right, I'm off to watch Wave Machines in Bristol. The band is on tour right now - trip along to one of their shows if you're in the vicinity of Brizzle, Birmingham, Manchester, Glasgow, Newcastle, York or (phew) Nottingham in the next ten days (the relevant dates can be found on the band's MySpace).

My Geppetto #7

A series of interviews exploring the influences of some of our favourite artists and clever clogses... who is your Geppetto?

We follow hot on the heels of Chivers with guitarist and songwriter John Smith. His latest album, Map Or Direction, is released today (Sep 14th).

What artist / human / thing would you say you have been most influenced by?


Pink Moon, by Nick Drake.

What is it about this 'thing' that you find intriguing?

It has had the biggest impact on my playing. There have been other records, but none so powerful. Pink Moon is a solo album, recorded live (save for the overdubbed piano on the title track) in two midnight sessions in the Autumn of 1971. He sat in the corner of a small studio, facing the wall, playing some of the most revolutionary guitar music ever recorded, freed of the constraints that larger band arrangements had placed on his previous output. His themes of love, loss and death are the profound meditations of a lonely and very sick man, all contained within just thirty minutes, eleven short songs.

The album is a milestone in the journey of guitar music. It showcases Drake's crazy, wonderful playing in all its glory - syncopated rhythms cascading in and out of seemingly complex chord structures. The genius of his writing was that he would only employ a handful of chords in a song, but cast such dynamic motifs that it sounds like he is playing something extremely complicated. His daring use of rhythm exacerbates the effect no end - and has left countless guitar players scratching their heads.

If you were to pick the most important work by this person, what would it be? Why?

One of the most powerful numbers is called 'Road':

Road
Nick Drake


He talks about death without pomp or pretense - 'You can take the road that takes you to the stars now. I can take the road that will see me through. I can take the road that will see me through.'

Three years later he was gone, just 26 years old.

The most underestimated? And why?

Pink Moon is it. The string arrangements in River Man and Way To Blue (both on Five Leaves Left, his first album) have left their mark on many people and rightly so. But I think less is more, and the sparse, tight performances on Pink Moon leave room for a mind to wander in and out of the spaces, melodically speaking. I think that his restraint on the record is the mark of a great musician, and is all the more inviting for it. Such restraint requires a lot of balls.

By contrast, I think Bryter Layter (his second record) is over-rated. Not that it isn't beautiful - I just don't care much for the folk-rock overdubs and deliberately loud vocals. The pop sensibilities seem incongruous and unpleasant, like a stranglehold.

What work of yours most bears this influence?

New song Hands (below) has a very pronounced rhythmic drive under a slow and evenly-paced vocal. The effect is that busy and relaxed things are happening at the same time, something Nick Drake used to do with such subtlety, you wouldn't even notice until you heard an album of his for the tenth time.



Listening to Drake has inspired me to explore my instrument. To try and play something different. His were statements of pure intent. I would say he was one of the greatest guitarists who ever lived.

WANT TO KNOW MORE?

Drake n00bs could do worse than start with the wealth of the musician's material on Youtube.

John, meanwhile, starts a UK tour at London's Roundhouse, in support of David Gray, tonight. Check his MySpace for details. He'll also be collaborating with poets Ross Sutherland and Chris Hicks for Mercy's Wave If You're Really There event at St Leonard's Church, Shoreditch on December 5th.

My Geppetto #6

A series of interviews exploring the influences of some of our favourite artists and clever clogses... who is your Geppetto?

This week we hear from Tom Chivers, poet and founder of his own small press, Penned In The Margins. Tom's poems have been described as ‘perfect little machines of their time, which will grow all the more beautiful when they begin to rust’ (Stride).

What artist / human / thing(s) are you most influenced by?


Apocalyptic sci-fi trilogy The Matrix.

What is it about the films that you find intriguing?

I love that fusion of cod philosophy, religious allegory and kick-ass action with big guns The Matrix has made its own. The entire conceit of the films – that reality is an illusion and the world as we know it is an elaborately coded computer simulation – is, of course, Buddhism for the Nintendo generation. But the style with which the Wachowski brothers bring it off is superb.

If you were to pick your favourite film of the trilogy, what would it be?

It’s impossible not to say the first film, The Matrix (1999). It contains all the crucial scenes, the moments that stick in your head: Neo crawling around his office to escape the agents; following the white rabbit; accepting the red pill and “waking up”; his initial training with Morpheus and subsequent development into matter-bending superhero. I mean, the whole thing is astonishing. That famous scene where Morpheus and Neo fight in the virtual dojo is great fun. (If you enjoy that more-than-slightly pretentious combination of abstract maxims and fighting, you’ll love the book Zen in the Martial Arts by Joe Hyams.)

Many consider Reloaded and Revolutions (both 2003) to be self-indulgent cash-ins. I disagree. The ways in which the sequels draw out the initial metaphors of the first film are superb and engaging for anyone even lightly versed in computer programming. For instance, in Reloaded we discover that The Matrix is merely the latest, flawed version of many attempts to control the human race – a beta software release, as it were. The whole vocabulary of the trilogy is dripping with terms pilfered from computing: system architecture, keys, back doors, the source, rogue programmes, clones, viruses… I could go on.

Is there anything about the films you don't like?

I’m tempted to say Keanu Reeves, he is completely out-acted by Hugo Weaving’s sinister Agent Smith. In the first film he plays the drop-out hacker well, but that’s because it’s the closest approximation to the stoner dude he played in Bill & Ted. Even in all his snazzy black leather gear, I expected him to do the Wyld Stallyns guitar solo at any time. I also find Neo’s relationship with Trinity, whilst allegorically appealing, unconvincing on a human level. Frankly, he’s dull, and she’s a coldfish.

What work of yours most bears evidence of the films' influence?

I’ve been trying to write a long poem with lots of syntactic fractures and injections of programming language. Predictably, I’m not getting very far, but I think it has promise. What I really want to capture, and what I’m so impressed by in The Matrix, is that sense of the city as a mock-up, a generic cardboard model of the real thing. The films’ subtle use of lighting and colour evoke an urban environment that is unreal, or rather hyper-real.

Of existing work, a poem I wrote for my residency at The Bishopsgate Institute is lifted, albeit unconsciously, from the climax of Reloaded, where Neo meets The Architect of The Matrix. It's called 'The Coder':

So, let's meet the coder;

he is the system architect.


You'll find him an empty office,

debugging the backend.


He parses, line by line,

the grand façade, the face;


Bishopsgate glitches.

A fine mist rises, envelops


the building. Firewall, on.

The City accepts this new


configuration. He is pleased,

rocks back on his swivel chair,


hears a grumble of piping.

Sudden stink of soil, oysters.


The hard disc whirrs as

a programme loads up.


The coder smiles and clicks.

Cutout figures begin to stalk


an imagined corridor,

form rows in a classroom.


Two cutouts assume

a common Yoga position;


in the Hall a faceless pianist

plays to a wedge of seating.


There is a knock at the door.

The coder stops, smiles briefly


and reaches down for

the Anti-Virus software.

WANT TO KNOW MORE ABOUT TOM?

Tom's debut collection, How To Build A City, is available now from Salt Publishing (following the link will also lead you to an excerpt from the book).

You can read the rest of the poems written during the Bishopsgate poetry residency here.

Yearbooking baby... and other things

It's hardly a new fad, but I couldn't help myself. They're not me without make-up, before you ask, but they are satisfyingly creepy (and, as one of Mercy pointed out, begging to be worked up into characters for 'Saved By The Bell - The Mutant Years'... I'll let you decide which one is the new Screech...)
And, last of all, my favourite: What do you get if you combine Bilbo Baggins (on Ring of Power cold turkey) with a hep and happening 1970s babelet?


Why, Ozzy Osborne of course.

My Geppetto #5

A series of interviews exploring the influences of some of our favourite artists and clever clogses... who is your Geppetto?

For the fifth in the series we'll hear from Bryan Biggs, artistic director of a key venue in Liverpool's arts scene, the Bluecoat.

What artist / human / thing(s) are you most influenced by?

Malcolm Lowry, the Merseyside writer born 1909:


To be honest, there are other artists who have influenced my thinking on creativity equally – from William Blake and Goya, to John Heartfield, the Beats and their 1960s British equivalents, a million and one musicians, and more recently WG Sebald.

However as this year is Lowry’s centenary it's pertinent to celebrate him.

What is it about him you find so intriguing?

Lowry was born in New Brighton and described Liverpool as “that terrible city whose main street is the ocean”. He left the area when young but Merseyside continued to inform his writing, even though he never returned. You can see echoes of his Wirral youth - his lost ‘Eden’ – in his love for the coastal landscape of Dollarton, outside Vancouver, where he lived in a squatter’s shack for 14 years (in fact shacks, as one burnt down, destroying some of his manuscripts).

He is intriguing because he remains outside the canon of modern English literature despite writing arguably one of the finest modernist novels; and despite that book, Under the Volcano, continuing to exert a profound influence on writers as well as filmmakers, choreographers, visual artists and musicians.

Turning his back on England, travelling first to the Far East as a teenage deckhand in 1927, then to Europe, the US, Mexico and Canada (with many global trips in between), meant he was virtually unknown in his homeland. I am interested in the possibility of ‘re-claiming’ Lowry for Merseyside, of adopting a psychogeographical approach in examining his relationship to Liverpool, which during his time there was hugely important as a port connected to the world, and for Lowry represented both Hell and a means of escape.

Alongside literature and drinking, his dual passions for the progressive art forms of the early 20th century, film and jazz, also positions Lowry as a writer connected to a modernity being forged and informed by popular culture as much as by high art. His rejection of the materialism of the modern world and living life on a perpetual binge, influenced both the Beats and the Situationists, whilst his love of the natural world and despair at what man was doing to it anticipated environmentalism. After all, we are all living under the volcano now.

If you were to pick the most important work by this person, what would it be? Why?

Under the Volcano (1947).

Set in Quauhnahuac (Cuernavaca), Mexico in the shadow of the twin volcanoes, the book takes place over 12 hours in a single day (the Mexican Day of the Dead) in the life (and death) of an alcoholic British Consul (pretty much Lowry himself), who is visited by his ex-wife and half brother.

Lowry said that the reader may read the book several times and still not get its full meaning. And it is indeed multilayered: guilt, remorse, ceaseless struggle, alcoholism, cabbalistic themes, cinematic structure and filmic and music references, autobiography (including vivid descriptions of the Wirral), insights into the Mexican character, and the underlying politics of the period, with Europe descending into war.

There is also much humour and poetry - Lowry regarded himself as a poet, but despite producing masses of (many unfinished) poems and such gems as his own epitaph:

Malcolm Lowry

Late of the Bowery

His prose was flowery

And often glowery

He lived, nightly, and drank, daily,

And died playing the ukulele.

It is in the pages of Under The Volcano that his poetry flowed.

The most underestimated? And why?

Lowry only published one other book in his lifetime, Ultramarine (from his experiences as a deck hand sailing from Birkenhead to China), heavily copied from books by his American mentor Conrad Aiken and the Norwegian Nordahl Grieg. His short stories, particularly Forest Path to the Spring, are well regarded but the general opinion is that only Under The Volcano has real merit. However, check out the short stories and October Ferry to Gabriola, incomplete when he died, and the novella Lunar Caustic, also published posthumously, set in a psychiatric ward at New York’s Bellevue Hospital. His letters were brilliant too – for instance the one to publisher Jonathan Cape arguing to leave his Volcano manuscript intact, which was described as “the most careful exposition of the creative imagination” and convinced Cape to publish it without cuts.

The most over-rated? And why?

None are overrated.

What work of yours most bears evidence of this influence?

I am organising a whole season of events to celebrate Lowry’s centenary this year at the Bluecoat. This will include an international exhibition of contemporary artists’ responses to Lowry, films, commissions of dance and music, a Day of the Dead altar dedicated to Lowry, a psychogeographical day visiting resonant Merseyside sites, plus talks, discussions and lots more (including a book of 12 new essays on Lowry by enthusiasts and academics, including images from the exhibition). It starts September 25th!

WANT TO KNOW MORE?

Bluecoat's Malcolm Lowry season kicks off, as Brian says, later this month. It will run until November 22nd. More details can be found on the Bluecoat's website under the section 'What's Happening'.

In the meantime, check out the blog of Lowry expert and contributor to the Bluecoat programme, Colin Dilnot.

Fun in the Big Smoke

It's been a few weeks since we last heard from my (mis)adventures in the Other Capital since deserting the World In One City to open Mercy's London office. Rest assured the place is still absolutely bonkers, and to prove it I've updated my diary / mindmap of the place and its goings on. Catch the latest here.

As if to prove one need only look up, down or around to see something semi-wild and unexplainable dahhn there, check this video we just got sent through this morning. We're not entirely sure how much any of us need to be sold on a soundcard that can be transported over rooftops and rivers, but the people at the party seem happy enough, so who are we to argue...

half a

your shock is a big dark dream-
words take you outward, i have sin it.
sin it.

the position you occupy is one of
someplace.
you say poetry & i do.

where i am not
whittling you take the
pocket knife and pocket

it. deep in your warlock apron

twisting
on yr pitchfork.
i wouldn't put it

in the past you
held this walnut with
cc'd fingers

and cracked it 'til out came
fireworks
of tired trumpets.

we go upward on and in my
dreams you appear
entirely.

i hesitate to say that we
wouldn wouldn't would
i hesitate

too. say! we may be
two sides of the same
groin-

ze portcullis, la reine

My Geppetto #4: Jen Poole talks about Jeffrey Lewis

A series of interviews exploring the influences of some of our favourite artists and clever clogses... who is your Geppetto?

For the fourth in the series, we'll hear from Jennifer Poole, co-organiser of London's most charming and off-kilter pop, folk and blues night, Let’s Go Baboon.

What artist / human / thing(s) are you most influenced by?


^ Comic book artist, musician and 'Lower East Sider' Jeffrey Lewis.

What is it about him that you find intriguing?

There’s something strangely biblical about him – he seems to wander the earth being humble and kind. He throws himself upon the mercy of strangers – sleeping on his fans’ floors and hitchhiking to gigs. He helps his less famous friends and musical idols when they fall on hard times – stuff like raising money for the medical bills of some guy who wrote amazing songs in the 60s but who now doesn’t have two pennies to rub together. When he’s not touring he holes up in an old shack in Maine and painstakingly creates these staggeringly beautiful and honest comic books. I bet he has great karma.

His songs are just like him - warm, witty and profound. And a bit awkward too. Admittedly, he can’t really sing and his voice cracks on the high notes. He looks like Steve Buscemi’s country cousin and freely admits to wearing rainbow tie-dye and being a ‘Dead Head’ for a decade. But what I love is that he takes existential angst as a given and builds on it. He is not hectoring but reminding himself when he sings stuff like: ‘Don’t let the record label take you out to lunch/you’re the one who has to pay at the end of the day/And try not to want people to like you too much/You’ll just need more and more flatteries to recharge your batteries’.

His songs are deliberations on trying to lead a creative life without becoming a self-indulgent prick.

If you were to pick your favourite Lewis song/comic, what would it be? Why?

Comic book ‘Fuff issue 5’ describes the pros and cons of his couch-surfing lifestyle beautifully. On the one hand the band (consisting of brother Jack and pal Dave) make friends all over the world and get the insider view of every city – but on the other they give up the right to room service and a ‘Do not disturb’ sign.

My friend Alex and I caught a glimpse of this when we drove them around on a mini-tour a few years ago. One night the band supported Regina Spector with whom they grew up. We all went for a curry after the gig and at the end she climbed in the back of a huge creepy van with blacked out windows, assisted by two beefy minders. By contrast we were five people and four guitars squished in a Renault Clio. The band just looked at her sadly, saying she seemed lonely.

Best song: I love the songs where he takes self-deprecation to new and hilarious levels. ‘East River’ is probably my favourite overall. The first verse is sweet; the second is clever and trips really neatly off the tongue. The third is just excruciatingly funny. This guy is no John Mayer – you can’t badge this kind of sensitivity and use it to pick up future women. Not normal ones anyway.



And if I had a girl on 11th avenue
I know exactly what she would do
She would wander at night hang around at bars
Find someone who draws better and plays prettier guitar
And then she'd leave me and I'd walk back east alone

9 8 7th avenue
Now I'm crossing Madison
Sobbing on Park Avenue
Feeling bad on Lexington
3 2 1st avenue
Going east with the wind
Cross the FDR to the east river
Throw myself in

Until the scum in the east river would drown me
The phlegm and rotten rats would surround me
The shattered cars at the bottom all around me
Until I was just more scum in the East river

The most underestimated song?

I think 'Williamsburg Will Oldham Horror' makes a lot of fans deeply uncomfortable. It’s a tale of confronting a man on the subway who may be Will Oldham or might just be some tramp with ‘The same sunglasses he wore on stage at the Bowery Ballroom’.



In the song he pleads with Oldham to enlighten him regarding his experience of being a stadium filling indie-rock star and instead gets sexually molested for his trouble. It gets the ‘Deliverance’ sniggering treatment in the press, and consequently people overlook how effing intense and amazing the song is.

The most over-rated?

‘The Last Time I did Acid I Went Insane’ is a song so over-rated by caners that Jeff actually wrote a second song to clarify the situation -he did not nor did he ever want to take acid so put your strawberry tabs AWAYYY.

What work of yours most bears evidence of this influence?

Every gig I’ve ever put on can be traced back to Jeff in some way. When I first met him I wasn’t involved in music at all and my life was a bit lonely and dull. But I met Stuart - the guy who started Let’s Go Baboon - at a Jeff Lewis gig. The band I manage (David Cronenberg’s Wife) hired me because of a shared love of his work.

I met Jeff in New York at a venue he often played at, Sidewalk, which became like a second home for me. Frankly if the man started a cult I would sign-up tomorrow. (I think the folks at Guardian Online would join me in the cult too – they’ve recently given Jeff his own lo-fi ‘News Channel’ - looky here.)

WANT TO KNOW MORE ABOUT LET'S GO BABOON / JENNY?

Let’s Go Baboon’s next show is at the Wilmington Arms this Friday (Aug 21) and features Golden Animals (L.A.), She Keeps Bees (New York), The Silver Abduction and more (myspace.com/letsgobaboon).

Jenny is attempting to visit 30 countries before she turns 30 in 3 months’ time, read about it at treepixie.tumblr.com.

Spicy Juice

Thank you, first, to the reader who wrote to say we spiced his juice. It spiced my guilt-juice for not having posted in a while, so here's some thingummies currently doing the rounds at Mercy Towers.

(P.S. Guilt-juice sounds like a synonym for the product of a shameful wank, I realise, but that's not what I meant.)

1. Slow Magic
Mercy main man Nathan Jones kicked off his poetry residency at Liverpool's bluecoat gallery with a neat exercise reminiscent of fridge magnet poetry. A user-friendly start to his year-long tenure, you can see the results here.

2. Stewart Brand

Controversial thinker whose soon-to-be-released book, Whole Earth Discipline, puts forward the idea that we 'are as gods, and have to get good at it'.

Currently floating my boat is his talk about nuclear power, slums, geoengineering and GM crops, given as part of the TEDGlobal conference.

Have a good rummage round that site while you're at it - it features fascinating lectures on art, politics, architecture and international development, and (and!) Gordon Brown telling a quite a good joke about Ronald Reagan.

3. Skinny Water

Do you believe in universal balance? For every Ted.Com scaling the heights of human achievement, for example, there must be an equal and opposite force of downright idiocy to prevent the cosmos from collapsing, irreversibly, in on itself. Introducing, then, Bio-Synergy Limited of Nutford Place, London, who have recently invented this.
Yes - 'low-calorie water'. Somebody, kill me now.

4. And lastly...

A lighters in the air indie anthem if we ever heard one, the new single by our partners in crime, Wave Machines, is out on August 31st. Listen and enjoy, then book tickets for their autumn tour, coming to a venue near you, right away!

My Geppetto #3: Joey D on the C64

A series of interviews exploring the influences of some of our favourite artists and clever clogses... who is your Geppetto?

For the third in the series, we'll hear from poet and author Joe Dunthorne. Joe was a guest at Mercy's Wave If You're Really There events in Liverpool in 2008. He also contributed to our latest publication, This Is A Little Book.

What artist / human / thing(s) are you most influenced by?
My Commodore 64.

What is it about it that you find intriguing?

Let me put it like this. You are ten years old.

On the one hand, your Dad, with a heartfelt commendation, has given you his Just William books to read. You could dive in to the adventures of William, Douglas, Henry and Ginger, who call themselves the Outlaws, and meet at the old barn in Farmer Jenks' field.

Or

You could don the galvanised platinum armour of Turrican and gyroscope past giant robotic fish while firing lightning from your cauterised jet-engine arm, thus saving the planet Katakis from destruction. All this while a banging, bleepy almost-techno soundtrack thrums from your portable TV.

My answer was simple. Unless Farmer Jenks has some giant robotic fish in that barn I’m not going near it.

Despite the accusations that computer games rot the mind, I would argue that the Commodore 64 required huge leaps of imagination of its players.

I’d read the description of the game on the back of the box, look at the terrifyingly awesome cover illustration:


and then, with fear, actually play the game:


It was a monumental suspension of disbelief to be convinced by those clunky, flickering eyeball-monsters that might jam in to the side of the screen at any minute.

The other great thing was the breadth of worlds it was possible to inhabit with a computer. In one day I could go from being a humble Paperboy, to delivering ore to non-spherical planets and, before bed, crack some skulls as a Viking adventurer.

Whereas literature seemed to have all sorts of expectations put upon it, about what it ought to be about, how you should respond to it, computer games had no history to worry about: the games were there to be interpreted and enjoyed in any way. In Wonderboy, I was free to choose the skateboard or just go à pied. It may seem like a small decision but it was a fundamental one. Books never offered that choice.

If you were to pick your favourite game, what would it be? Why?

The Shoot Em Up Construction Kit.

It was a simple programme that allowed you to draw your own characters, create your own levels, set the rules for the game, and then play them. For me, this opened up the potential of creativity.

Although the programme was extremely limited, I remember being astounded at the possibilities available I made games about airborne scorpions, games about a family of amorphous blobs, and, most significantly, I made the original Grand Theft Auto, a game called Joyrider. It is, to quote the instruction manual, “an action-packed, extravaganza of carnage across four massive, gore-filled levels.” That’s right – four levels. I must have spent months in my room trying to animate the gorey death of a farmer (Farmer Jenks?) in the gripping final level of Joyrider. It proved such a hit (with John Mernagh, a boy from my class) that I even made a sequel, Joyrider II.

Looking back, it’s clear to me that these games were the first creative output for things going in my life at the time. During the nineties, Swansea was the car crime capital of the UK. At night, I used to get woken by the stolen cars squealing down the steep cobbled hill at the end of my road.

There was a house at the bottom of the hill which, until they put up the concrete bollards, had nicked cars come through its bay windows a couple of times a year.

The most underestimated game?

The Bayeux Tapestry.


This was the first side-scrolling beat-em-up but it never got the recognition it deserved. In these screen shots you can see the development between it and later games, with only slightly better graphics – like Vikings:


The most over-rated?

I don’t like to talk jive about any Commodore 64 games. There is a sacred bond and I will not break it.

What work of yours most bears evidence of this influence?

Well, most obviously, is the short story I wrote that was inspired by the old Text Adventure games that I used to play on the C64 and the Amstrad. In fact, you can still play one of the all-time greatest text adventures online at douglasadams.com.

It was written by Adams and tells roughly the same story as Hitchhiker’s Guide. It’s brilliant.

I wanted to write an interactive story that avoided the traditionally geeky, orc-laden world of computer games and fantasy. So, in this game, the key decision (the eat-me, drink-me moment) is whether to have a green olive or a black one.

You can play it here: http://joedunthorne.com/cyod1_1.html.

Also, one of the things that I learnt about trying to make games on a computer as feeble as the C64 was the pleasures and inventions of working under restriction. The fun was in trying to escape the shackles of the computer’s crappy sound and graphics capabilities.

The French writing movement the OULIPO placed restrictions on their writing as a way of forcing themselves toward creating work that stepped outside of their routinised mindsets. They said they were “Rats who build the labyrinth from which they plan to escape.” George Perec famously wrote La Disparition, a novel that does not use the letter ‘e’. The novel was translated in to English as “A Void” which, I understand, also acts as a mini-review of the book.

With Ross Sutherland and Tim Clare, I worked on a show about the OULIPO that featured Univocalisms (poems with only one vowel) that we’d written. Have a look at my poem that only uses ‘I’, This Is Crispin.

There are also some videos of the show. Here's Ross in action to finish:

WANT TO KNOW MORE ABOUT JOE?

Joe is one of the brains behind London literary cabaret, Homework. The next event takes place tomorrow (Wednesday, July 29th) from 7pm at Bethnal Green Working Men's Club. Joe is joined by other Homework residents Chris Hicks, Luke Wright and Ross Sutherland. More details can be found on Facebook.

Joe's debut novel, Submarine, is available on Amazon.

A Month Is Not Enough

Aaaaand relax. June and July have taken their toll on our weary young souls; the hangover of our 18-month Arts Council development grant giving way to the daunting realisation that we now have to make everything we promised actually happen. Cue a flipcharts and blackboards bonanza; we've been nailing down what on Earth we actually are in some fun-time Mission Values workshops, and also planning our new bells-and-whistles website with our good friends Kev Adamson and Behind Design. You should sign up to our mailing list on Mercy Online to get info about when it'll be going live, and to get free exclusive content over the summer. In the meantime, the first piece of 'nu' Mercy is:

1. Our debut poetry collection, This Is A Little BookA collection of new writing by Salena Godden, Luke Kennard, Joe Dunthorne, Luke Wright, Ross Sutherland and Nathan Jones, illustrated by some our favourite Mercy collaborators from over the years. Buy it here.

2. John Smith album
We've been lucky enough to have a rough copy of John Smith's new album loaded on our iTunes for a couple of months now, while we design the artwork for it. Recorded on the road across America's Deep South, it's magnificent and we're chuffed to be designing something for him at last. All the photos were taken by John himself (at the same time as playing the guitar one-handed, knowing him). Check out his MySpace if you haven't yet had the pleasure.

3. And not forgetting...

Mercy's design team are also now looking after a ton o' marketing stuff for the Young Vic theatre in London, which we are suitably excited about. Our first job was to design them some faux-prostitute cards; which was quite fitting since we acted like hussies to win the job in the first place. A lesson for you all: show up at their gaff with a homemade Victoria Sponge and any client will find you irresistible.

WANT TO KNOW MORE?

Check our portfolio for all of the above and more; there's new stuff in there for Campaign Against Living Miserably, Kings Place, Voodou, and the results of our mega-fun photoshoot with the 3 foot tall face of Virgin1, Red (pictured, left).