The Recession Session Live, involving some of the best young writers around, took place on Friday 24th April 09 in the cellar gig room at The Betsey Trotwood, London. Organised and hosted by Steve Finbow, Joseph Ridgwell and Melissa Mann, it was a fast and furious (but thankfully Vin Diesel-less) night of rants, readings, burlesque and music. This issue of Beat the Dust features most of the stories and poems read on the night. Some are subject to exclusivity clauses and BTD’s ed doesn’t self-publish, so those pieces are missing. Anyway, it’s as near as damn it a “hard copy” of the Recession Session Live! So, for those who couldn’t be there, hopefully this will make you feel like you were. Obviously the hosts thought the lit gig was ace, but for a more objective view on how it went, a review of the event by Sam Jordison is included in this issue.
THE RECESSION SESSION LIVE! EDITION OF BEAT THE DUST
Author:
Paul Ewen identifies the novel/play/poem/song he wishes he’d written
I hope to write a great New Zealand novel, following the lead of Janet Frame, Witi Ihimaera, Keri Hulme and others. I wish I’d written a Zucker brothers script, such as one of the Airplane screenplays, or more specifically the semi-obscure masterpiece, Top Secret. The poem I wish I'd written is The Magpies by Denis Glover, and the song in my head is Spike Milligan's Q5 Piano Tune.
Submission Date:
08 May 2009
Category:
Short story
In Podcast and Chap-book
Title:
rox by Paul Ewen
Excerpt:
I was lying across a wooden bench in Ruskin Park, talking to myself about baking a tasty cake, and excitedly stomping my feet on the flat, wooden planks, when I felt something hairy rub against my dangling arm.
It was a medium-sized brown dog, and its tongue was out, and it seemed pretty excited. I leaned across to scratch its head and the back of its neck and behind its ears, and it laughed.
David Oprava identifies the novel/play/poem/song he’d like to hear on his death bed
As I am kicking the bucket, I only want....
…to be listening to Terrapin Station by the Grateful Dead. The combination of lyrics and melody come together in a way that uplifts. The words chosen are precise and angled at those who need redemption, who need release, who need something beyond. As I am dying, I am sure as hell going to need those things.
…to be read Trout Fishing in America by Richard Brautigan. His simple lines and gentle surreality, combined with a flow of easy place, time, living, whilst underneath lurked the suicide that would become him. He makes me smile and sad at the same time. A gentle soul bending the world around him. I'd die happy with his words under my fingertips.
…to be read my own poem Segue. So that I can ruefully reflect on the waste of so many years, but grin at the love I had in small glimmering doses amongst the hash I made of it all.
I don't like plays.
Submission Date:
08 May 2009
Category:
Audio Recording
In Chap-book
Title:
Oblivion by David Oprava
Excerpt:
An audio recording of David Oprava reading his poem Oblivion, first performed at the Recession Session Live!
Lee Rourke identifies the novel/play/poem/song he wishes he’d written
Novel: Maurice Blanchot’s L’Arret de Mort. It is sublime in both the original sense of the word and its bastardised modern usage.
Song: The Smiths’ Unhappy Birthday. Simply genius.
Poem: Robert Lowell’s Skunk Hour. Just for the line ‘My mind’s not right.’
Play: Samuel Beckett’s Endgame. Because nobody can live with the end.
Submission Date:
08 May 2009
Category:
Flash fiction
In Podcast and Chap-book
Title:
the same space by Lee Rourke
Excerpt:
They came. Screaming along-side him. Roaring. Outside. Again. And again. Endless. The endless screaming. The endless roaring. Never ending. Endless. Endless endlessness. Just outside. Through the window. Outside. Screaming. Roaring. Past him. He waited. Broken. Static. He waited. Traction. Rubber on bitumen. The sky above. Grey. The bitumen black. The white lines. His feet tapping. His arms folded. He remained. Seated. Static. Quiet. Even the radio broken. Nothing. Just screaming. Just roaring. Over and over. Again. And again. Away. Going away from him. To their own places. One after the other. Caught in their space. The same space.
Danny King identifies the novel/play/poem/song he wishes he’d written
Novel: Animal Farm by George Orwell. Perfection is simplicity (Also, I can’t see The Burglar Diaries making it onto the schools curriculum any time soon).
Play/script: Thieves Like Us. Sitcom on BBC Three. In actual fact, I did write the scripts for that show. I just wish some people had fucking watched it.
Poem: The boy stood on the burning deck, his pockets full of crackers… etc” because again, perfection is simplicity.
Song: That single note that plays when you start an Apple Mac, as long as I get a PayPal penny in royalties every time it’s played.
Submission Date:
08 May 2009
Category:
Poetry
In Chap-book
Title:
quentin kirk by Danny King
Excerpt:
Quentin Kirk, a library clerk was bored at home and bored at work
A wife two kids his life was nice but Quentin Kirk desired spice
So each night he'd kneel and pray to make his life change day by day
Mark SaFranko identifies the novel/play/poem/song he wishes he’d written
Script: Allan Scott's adaptation of Daphne DuMaurier's Don’t Look Now. Why? It's utterly perfect. As perfect as the screenplay for, say, Chinatown.
Novel: Dostoyevsky's The Devils. For its uncanny anticipation of a few days that would shake the world.
Poem: An obscure poem by Charles Bukowski called Giving Thanks. For having the balls to say what no one else would dare say.
Song: I'd hardly know where to start. But today I'll take The Pleasures Of The Harbor, the song by Phil Ochs. Why? Because it has a great melody. Don't hear them much nowadays. I'm a sucker for melody.
Submission Date:
08 May 2009
Category:
Novel extract
In Chap-book
Title:
hating olivia, an extract from Mark SaFranko's novel
Excerpt:
A video recording of Mark SaFranko reading a short extract from his first Max Zajack novel, Hating Oliviapublished by Murder Slim Press.
Christiana Spens identifies the novel/play/poem/song she wishes she’d written
Novel: The Talented Mr. Ripley. I'm reading it just now, and I'd love to have accomplished that perfect, witty, modest prose.
Play/script: Clueless. Such a great script to read, so much fun, and I adore the doe-eyed sarcasm.
Poem: The Sick Rose by Blake. For whatever reason, it's the poem that always touches me the most.
Song: It's a tie, right now, between This Time Tomorrow by the Kinks and Play With Fire by the Rolling Stones.
Submission Date:
08 May 2009
Category:
Novel extract
In Chap-book
Title:
the idiots’ club, the first page of a new, unpublished novel by Christiana Spens
Excerpt:
Clementine died sometime in between the third course and the fourth, but nobody noticed her demise ‘til breakfast time. Emmanuel and Ivana were upstairs together so they didn’t notice anything was strange until the sirens woke them from their sleep. By the time they got downstairs, Angie was in hysterics and a lot of the guests had left already, running away and pretending they had nothing to do with this whole misdemeanour. Ivana realised later that she should have followed them.
Steve Finbow identifies the novel/play/poem/song he wishes he’d written
I wish I had written lots of things. Even my own stuff. Started earlier. Worked harder. Kathy Acker’s Blood and Guts in High School. Buzzcocks’ Breakdown. Television’s Little Johnny Jewel. Any poems by Ted Berrigan, Clark Coolidge, Charles Bernstein, & Tom Raworth. 2666 by Roberto Bolaño.
Submission Date:
08 May 2009
Category:
Short story
In Podcast and Chap-book
Title:
reading instructions by Steve Finbow
Excerpt:
They had to restrain me. Give me some kind of sedative. And it had all started so calmly. Hold on. Let me think. That could be so different. They had to restrain me, give me some kind of sedative, and it had all started so calmly. That’s better. Or is it? The first has an imperative feel. Direct. Urgent. They had to restrain me. Fact. Am I still restrained? If I am, then the sympathy is with me, the empathy. If not, I have escaped, I am the hero, the revenger. If they let me go, then where am I? Hiding in a broom closet? Beneath a table? In the boot of your car? Could this be a tale from beyond the grave, a manuscript found hidden under the thin mattress, written on sheets of toilet paper using blood as ink, a tongue depressor for a pen?
Will Ashon identifies the novel/play/poem/song he wishes he’d written
Novel: Turning To Glue by Marty Ackermann. Coruscating sixties expose of the glue industry written in an invented dialect from the point of view of a glue brush. Poor Ackermann committed suicide a year later. Or did he? Literary conspiracy theorists point to the involvement of vested Big Glue interests.
Play/script: Stick Up by Marty Ackermann. Early play from the teenage Ackermann. Dismissed as juvenilia by academe, it eerily foretells his death by head-in-glue-pot and, though the dialogue is boring, repetitive and unrealistic, has a rhythm which the mature Ackermann would make his own.
Poem: Too Attached by Muriel Felt. An expressionist narrative work written in sestinas by Felt - Ackermann's lover and muse - shortly after his death.
Song: Sticky Ends by Cosmic Binding. The high point of Ackermann and Felt's journey into psychedelic rock. Ackermann's four minute, one note guitar solo has to be heard to be believed.
Submission Date:
08 May 2009
Category:
Short story
In Podcast and Chap-book
Title:
muslims and bankers by Will Ashon
Excerpt:
The Muslims were thrilled about the banking crisis. It took the heat off them. But then again, they felt bad about the Bankers, who seemed like a nice enough bunch of people.
The Muslims decided to have the Bankers to dinner. The Bankers were more than a little surprised. They’d had very little good to say about the Muslims for a number of years now. But then again, they were lonely so they cancelled their reservations and set off for the Muslims’ hut.
Vic Templar identifies the novel/play/poem/song he wishes he’d written
Novel: My instinct is to say Billy Liar, as that is my answer to most questions. However, how literally do I have to take the question? In order to have written any of these things I would have to have led a similar life at the same time and location as the author/playwright/poet, which puts a different complexion on it. I am pretty happy with my lot and the life I've led. Could I still be Vic Templar, born in Gillingham, Kent in 1965 and write Hunger set in 1890's Oslo or Ask the Dust? John Fante was a huge influence on and inspiration for my own writing, much more so than Waterhouse and Billy Liar. I saw something in his voice, the hopes, aspirations and day dreams of the young man, who wanted so much to be a writer, a big shot. I like works by Waugh and Pahalaniuk but wouldn't like to have lived their lives. Ditto Orwell, Camus. Alan Sillitoe seems to have led a full life - would feel very proud of Saturday Night, Sunday Morning. Heck, let's just say Billy Liar. Read it about 9 times between ages 16 and 41 and it has never let me down. I think it earned Waterhouse a few bob too. Ah, changed my mind. I wish I'd written Oracle Night by Paul Auster. I have only found him in the last 3 years, but am rarely less than dazzled by his imagination and his style, which makes me think I could have written his books - but of course, I couldn't. I'd be equally happy to put my name to the New York Trilogy, Timbuctoo, Red Notebook, Mr Vertigo and the last one (can't recall the title).
Script/Play: Billy Liar? Okay, let's pick something different. Forget script, assume you mean stage play. I like Pinter and Orton. Shaffer's Sleuth is another favourite. JB Priestley did some good plays about time slips, which I have read but never seen. I liked Faustus by Marlowe but have never seen it performed.
Poem: I have a bit of a blank spot with poetry, a bit like I do with opera. I don't understand the form or language. Studied Keats and Wilf Owen at skool, both of whom I liked very much. I like Under Milk Wood (poem or play?). I like my mates’ stuff - Billy Childish, Wolf Howard, Sexton Ming, Joe Ridgwell. I like Bukowski too, though not read him for a long time.
Song: Bloody hell, how am I meant to pick a song I wish I'd written? The Amorous Humphrey Plugg? Waterloo Sunset? I Say a Little Prayer? Too Much Monkey Business? One thing about writing a song is that other people might sing it. I'd like to have written a song and hear it covered by Paul Robeson, Sammy Davis, Frank Sinatra, Elvis, The Fall and Pulp. I'll go for Merry Xmas Everybody - still sung by Noddy Holder of course. Royalties would be good, but the main reason is that it always makes me very happy (though tinged with a little melancholy that it is no longer xmas 1974) whenever I hear it. I imagine thousands feel the same. I couldn't care less about the thousands who hate it like I hate Stop the Cavalry or Last Christmas. Merry Xmas Everybody is about the family, young and old, coming together, forgetting all their troubles and having a good time, which is exactly what my family did in those days. It is what I have tried to capture in my novel, Taking Candy from a Dog.
Submission Date:
08 May 2009
Category:
Flash fiction
In Podcast and Chap-book
Title:
bobby charlton was our dustman by Vic Templar
Excerpt:
No he wasn't, that's a lie, but it sounds good doesn't it. At least I don't think it was him. This would have been the late 1960s or very early 1970, before I started school. Every Wednesday they'd come round and empty our bin into that lorry of theirs. What a wonderful ritual. It was different back then.
Jenni Fagan identifies the novel/play/poem/song she wishes she’d written
Song: There are so many songs I wish I’d written I think I’ll go for Time of the Season by the Zombies, as its one of the few I would have covered.
Novel: I genuinely can’t think of any novels I wish I’d written. I don’t know why. I just want to write what I write and when I read I just like to read. Perhaps I should go for a bastardised amalgamation of the Malleus Maleficarum and the Bible being shit down the neck of Sartre on the sixth day Burroughs gave up junk.
Poem: A poem I wish I’d written is On Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird by Wallace Stevens. The stanza ‘Among twenty snowy mountains, the only moving thing, was the eye of the blackbird’ is enough to make me wish I’d written the whole thing.
Play: The 1604 version of The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus by Christopher Marlowe is a play I’d like to have written. It was rumoured that actual demons were seen on stage at some of the performances and also, that some members of the audience went irrevocably mad after seeing it.
Submission Date:
08 May 2009
Category:
Poetry
In Podcast and Chap-book
Title:
she's in my dream by Jenni Fagan
Excerpt:
The gypsy girl, she thunders by on a runaway rock horse
her mustachio’d cigarettes twitch, quit nicotine, refuse matches.
In Montreol the whisper Ménage e trois, si vou plais?
Joseph Ridgwell identifies the novel/play/poem/song he wishes he’d written
The song I'd like to have written is The Ten Commandments by Prince Buster, as I often recite the lyrics to my new girlfriends. I never wish to have written a play because they are crap. Novel? Only my own, which I have. Pome? So We’ll Go No More A-Roving. You know, Byron wasn't a very good poet, but he lived the life of a poet in all its romantic glory, plus he shagged, whored, and drunk untold and had lots of adventures. I wished I'd written this pome because 1. It isn't totally original. See the traditional Scottish poem, The Jolly Beggar, or the traditional sea shanty, The Maid of Amsterdam, 2. It's beautiful, and 3. I think I probably was George Gordon in another life, and so I probably did write it.
Submission Date:
08 May 2009
Category:
Short story
In Chap-book
Title:
the assassination egg by Joseph Ridgwell
Excerpt:
It was a grey, non-descript Sunday evening and I was resting in my beat apartment, sucking on an ice-cold beer, when the buzzer sounded.
As I had alienated all my friends years ago, I picked up the hand-set somewhat reluctantly, hoping it wasn’t the Jehovah’s Witnesses, again.
Darran Anderson identifies the novel/play/poem/song he wishes he’d written
Novel: Nearly every book I read these days I think "you bastard, why didn’t I think of that?" and then crawl into a corner and cry (Sum by David Eagleman being the last one). The Bible would be interesting I 'spose, to see what you could get away with. The addition of space aliens when the plot starts to sag, wouldn't have done any harm. Maybe Bob from Twin Peaks as an apostle...
Song: John Frusciante's Running Away Into You because it doesn't really sound like anything else. Or Kate Bush's Wuthering Heights.
Script: Once in a while, these strange and disreputable oddballs are thrown up like Emperor Joshua Norton, Adolf Wolfli or Mad King Ludwig. Werner Herzog is a master of exploring these types of character and events (megalomaniac conquistadors, mirages, Russian mystics). His films are incredibly beautiful, but dark as hell too. The word genius should be used sparingly, but he's got a better claim than most. Could pick any of his scripts but The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser stands out. All the more because it's based on a true story. (Failing that, I'd like to have control of any Richard Curtis film and end it in either a literal bloodbath, or a really depressing orgy).
Poem: Tom Wait's Ninth and Hennepin There's more poetry in this than most so-called laureates could manage in five lifetimes.
Submission Date:
08 May 2009
Category:
Flash fiction
In Podcast and Chap-book
Title:
the old man and the traffic island by Darran Anderson
Excerpt:
It appeared, these days, that even the sight of an elderly man publically masturbating was not enough to stop traffic. “What was the world coming to?” he thought, as he put his flaccid member back into his pants. It’s all gone to hell.
He hated them. Every occupant of every car that kept him marooned. The adults who ignored him. The imbecilic children who waved. The dogs with their heads out the windows, tongues flapping like stupid flags. He hated their faces. Hated their gormless fucking faces. Each more wretched than the last. In fact it was safe to say, the only thing he hated more than their gormless fucking faces, was his own face. Gazing back at him as he lapped at the puddle. The kind of face that made him believe that God was an arsehole.
Sam Jordison identifies the novel/play/poem/song he wishes he’d written
Novel: I'm starting to wish I would get round to writing any kind of novel of my own, let alone someone else's. But I guess I'd have to go for A Farewell To Arms. It's so far out of reach that all anyone can do is wish. Otherwise, you can't approach it. Every sentence has been chiselled and polished to such perfection. It's so hard, but also heart-melting. And the conclusion is so crushing. It took a mean bastard like Hemingway to kill that baby - but the world is richer for it.
Play/script: Easy. Hamlet. Because then I'd be the damn well greatest genius that ever lived.
Poem: The Aeneid. Because then I could have a fight with my Shakespeare self about who was actually the biggest genius, and serve me right for saying such choices are easy.
Song: Does lust for money count as a valid reason? If yes, Suspicious Minds. If no, probably Suspicious Minds too because it's a great song. And because, by writing it, I might have been able to meet Elvis... And ask him a few questions...
Submission Date:
08 May 2009
Category:
Review
In Chap-book
Title:
a review of the recession session live! by Sam Jordison
Excerpt:
I arrived at Liverpool Street Station with time to spare before the Beat The Dust / 3AM Recession Session. In a few hours, writers like Stewart Home, Paul Ewen, Lee Rourke, Steve Finbow, Melissa Mann, Joseph Ridgwell, Tom McCarthy (and many others) were scheduled to rant for five minutes each about The Way Things Are in the Betsey Trotwood, Farringdon. But first I had to get acclimatised to the capital. I'd come in from Norfolk and it had been a long time since I'd been to The City. A lot had gone down in the interim. The stock market had gone down. A long way. The price of houses had gone down. Not quite enough. The government's approval rating had gone down. Even further than before. And so on.
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