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Sunday, March 29
Art for Art's sake
by
Charles Christian
on Sun 29 Mar 2009 09:16 PM BST
I took this picture about a year ago, outside the National Gallery in London. I was actually interested in the girl sitting there with her two enormous chalk drawings – however when I later looked at the image on screen, I spotted the guy in the three-piece suit and boater straw hat walking by in the background. Looking at him, it's as if the last 50 years hadn't happened. As they sing in the Rocky Horror musical: "let's do the timewarp again..."
Tales from the Spoken Word Frontline
by
Charles Christian
on Sun 29 Mar 2009 07:26 PM BST
Just come back from a live lit/spoken word event and I'm wondering these two things...
* Why do so many male poets still write like Charles Bukowski ? and * Why do so many male poets still read or perform their work like Adrian Mitchell in 1968? Can we please move on? Saturday, March 28
Now appearing on Twitter
by
Charles Christian
on Sat 28 Mar 2009 03:50 PM GMT
 Starting this coming Monday, I'm going to 'tweeting' on the Twitter 'micro-blogging' service. If you know what it is, then 'good' as I don't need to explain it you. If you don't know what it is... bit of a problem but try it anyway as it costs nothing. I'll be mainly posting about the journalism day job but I'll also be covering the writing world generally, plus events (literature/spoken word & otherwise), plus – hopefully – some human interest stuff. You can 'follow' me – Charles Christian – at http://twitter.com/FourthEstate Thursday, March 19
New haibun - I'm bitchin'
by
Charles Christian
on Thu 19 Mar 2009 01:42 PM GMT
Bitchin' after the gig And they were all ENORMOUS. There was one guy in jeans who's bottom must have taken up the entire stock of blue denim at the Levi Strauss factory for at least 6 weeks ! There was a woman, skinny as a rake, with two of the biggest daughters you've ever seen in your life. How come she never said "Hey girls, go easy on the Desperate Dan-sized portions of cow pie?" they were chowing down throughout the evening. Short smock-type dresses worn with solid tights or leggings were popular among the lurvely laydees – except everyone so clad was either self-consciously tugging at their hems to stop revealing their – in some instances planetary sized – arses or else trying to hitch up their tights to stop a bad attack of sagging gusset. Add in long pointy-toed shoes with Cruella de Vi high heels – causing their wearers to waddle, splay-footed like Charlie Chaplin's Tramp to avoid toppling over, and you can understand how the phrase 'fashion victim' originated. And when four of the biggest women got up to dance, I was just sooo glad we were in a basement bar... A grand night out Mmmm – the smell of fresh sweat and stale perfume Monday, March 16
Charles Christian playing the Brighton Fringe
by
Charles Christian
on Mon 16 Mar 2009 08:58 PM GMT
 Tickets have gone on sale today for my one-man, one-night only show during the Brighton Fringe Festival. The location is Fletch at St Andrews, Hove – the date is Tuesday 5th May – the time is 6:00pm. It's called Tales from the Digital Slow Lane and takes the form of a series stories about growing up in a seaside town in the 1960s, failing to find any sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll – and wondering what to do about the bomb beneath my bed. Tickets cost from £8.00 – call 08444 771000 or online at http://www.fletchatstandre Saturday, March 14
Instant karma
by
Charles Christian
on Sat 14 Mar 2009 02:13 PM GMT
 Karl Marx once wrote about religion being the opiate of the people. John Lennon sang about instant karma going to get you. Somewhere in between lies a reality where if people can't get high on what established religions have to offer them, they will create their own rituals and beliefs. And so we come to the Cross Bones burial grounds in the London district of Southwark. Fifteen years ago this was just another London Transport depot, lying on Redcross Way, which runs between Southwark Cathedral and Union Street. But, 500 years ago, it was an unconsecrated graveyard for 'single women' - which in those days was a euphemism for prostitutes. These working girls were known locally as 'Winchester Geese' because they were licensed by the Bishop of Winchester to operate in this area - which happened to lay outside the jurisdiction of the City of London authorities and so, as a consequence, became the capital's red light district. This lack of regulation was also the reason why Shakespeare and his players moved their Globe Theatre to Southwark. By the mid-Nineteenth Century however, the graveyard was totally overcrowded and closed for further burials. And that, apart from occasional desultory attempts to gain planning permission to redevelop the site, was it. End of story. Or, at least that would have been been the end of the story, except that in 1996, local writer John Constable revived the story of the Cross Bones graveyard, the Winchester Geese and what he called 'the outcast dead' for cycle of poems and plays known as The Southwark Mysteries. Performances of the Mysteries struck a chord, to the extent that every year since 1998, the gates leading into the London Transport depot have become the venue for a Halloween festival - complete with processions, candles, ribbons, flowers, shrines and offerings for the dead - that seems to have more in common with the Mexican Dia de Los Muertos day of the dead festivals (that and more than a smattering of neo-paganism and the Samhain festival) than anything a 16th century Bishop of Winchester would have ever envisaged taking place in his diocese on All Saints Eve. And so a new religion is born... supplying a fresh source of ecstasy to satisfy our age old cravings – and magical realism enters the real world. Sunday, March 8
Saturday, March 7
Keeping things in perspective
by
Charles Christian
on Sat 07 Mar 2009 01:18 PM GMT
At a time when the western world is heading for financial meltdown - and that we'll soon be all existing on a level of BarterTown in the Mad Max III movie - except this time around there'll be no Tina Turner in a chain-mail frock - it's important to keep a proper sense of perspective - which is why I'm glad to see that this week my local newspaper devoted its entire front page to a story about an OAP who believes he owns the world's oldest living bunny - a rabbit that's 16 years old - the added irony here being in this part of the UK, rabbits are a pest and we have to hire trained sociopaths to trap, poison and/or shot them. It's all about perspective. Monday, March 2
New Facebook link
by
Charles Christian
on Mon 02 Mar 2009 05:47 PM GMT
I've just started up a Facebook link – you can find it about half way down the left/hand column of this blog. If you like to add me to your friends list (or vice versa) I'd be more than happy to oblige... CC
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