MPFree: Tawazula by Lumerians

Full marks to Lumerians for really hamming up the psych/space-rock vibes on this cut from their new Horizon Structures EP. Musically the San Franciscans make Tame Impala sound like teetotal Mormons from Tunbridge Wells; the cover artwork (above) is reminiscent of those spray-painted galactic scene canvasses you can purchase on the street in cheap Greek beach resorts – which is a good thing.

Lumerians play The Waiting Room, N16, this coming Wednesday (Nov 28).

Morten Myklebust Plays London Tonight

Fans of Nordic music will be flooding down (no pun intended) to the Old St Pancras Church this evening for a first glimpse of Morten Myklebust, a hotly-tipped emerging artist. He’s apparently been working behind the scenes with Norway’s best and brightest for several years now, and if the rather beautiful track below is anything to go by, his self-titled debut album will see him doing justice to his talents as a newly-fledged solo artist. Lost hovers between Kings Of Convenience and Elliot Smith perhaps, at once soothing and sad.

In-depth interview: Flash fiction publisher Holly Clarke explains how a 60-word story can still mean something

Snipe: Can you tell us about why the London Literary Project exists, what it does and what you would like it to become?

Holly: London Literary Project was born from a desire to create a website that would form a respected platform for London writers and those inspired by the city to showcase flash fiction and poetry. In a visual age, it had to look good too, hence the emphasis on evocative photography. The growing move to e-readers and the success of online literary magazines such as Five Dials shows that people are open to consuming literature digitally, as long as it is well packaged. London Literary Project will run various challenges, the first of which, the London Clock, will create a literary day in the life of the city. Submissions are open to all and so we have unpublished writers rubbing virtual shoulders with acclaimed prize-winning and published authors. Once the clock has evolved there will be a journal or book containing a collection of our favourites. Where London Literary Project will end up remains an exciting mystery so watch this space! London is home to a fantastically talented and creative writing community, and future projects will be shaped by the work of this community.

Snipe: The London Clock is structured around time and place. Each piece is set in a specific London location at a specific time of day. Can you talk about why you decided to structure the challenge like that?

Holly: One person’s 9am in London may be very different to another’s. One is running to a meeting down Fleet Street and the other may be jogging along the South Bank, or ordering a coffee in the West End. It would prove impossible to distil the essence of London in one piece of writing, because the city is such a chameleon. The London Clock was structured so as to capture numerous snapshots of London, to allow readers to gain an insight into the city’s many faces, and the faces of the city’s many people from different perspectives. How better to put together a literary day in the life of our city than by requesting little contributions from those who have lived and breathed it and know its streets?

Snipe: Flash fiction has a lot going for it – it’s democratic, it’s quick, it reads nicely on an iPhone. But (perhaps unfairly), there’s a sense that it is something written by aspiring writers for other aspiring writers to read. Do you think it’s time for flash fiction to break through to a mainstream audience? Does it matter if it doesn’t?

Holly: I think it already is breaking through to mainstream audiences. Salt Publishing (Publisher to one of this year’s shortlisted Man Booker Prize entries ‘The Lighthouse’) is running a flash fiction competition this year that will end with publication of a flash fiction collection, and there are a number of other high profile competitions and projects out there. Whilst flash fiction will never replace the standard novel format, and nor should it, this genre has exciting things to offer readers who are time poor and increasingly open to reading on smart phones whilst squashed in the corner of the bus at rush hour.

Snipe: You publish very snappy 60 word stories, longer 250 word “flash epics”, and also poems and various other experimental forms. Do you think there’s a limit to the depth of meaning 60 words of prose can bear? Can something that short be truly transformative? Or am I looking for something that doesn’t need to be there?

Holly: The joy of the short format is that there can be no preamble. The writer must propel you into position immediately and weave their magic quickly. That’s why the genre fits so well with the London Clock because life in this city is often made up of snatches, glimpses, and rushed encounters. Some of our pieces are thought-provoking, some humorous, and all are vehicles for the reader to fill in their own experiences or emotions. This type of interaction between reader and writer is powerful.

Snipe: What makes a successful piece of flash fiction?

Holly: Two things: Number one – discipline. With a limited word count every sentence must drive the story forward. Wasted words are a real crime. Number two – A sense of fun. Flash fiction is an experimental genre and it’s there to be played with!

Snipe: Using London as a shared starting point for all the pieces allows the reader to make connections between different stories. Do you think that read together, the pieces are more than the sum of their parts? Is that the best way to read flash fiction, as fragments of a whole?

Holly: The aim of the London Clock is to read the pieces together in order to create an image of the city as a whole and so yes, the stories do become more than the sum of their parts. Creating an image of a multi-dimensional urban environment lends itself to taking snapshots from numerous perspectives and then piecing these together. What about flash fiction more generally? Yes, the pieces are limited in length, but this does not impede writing that contains true depth of emotion. Certainly, the Beatles’ success wasn’t hampered by the 3 minute restriction of a seven-inch single! A good flash fiction story does not require other pieces to support it. It stands alone as a bare, brief moment – there is power in brevity, and that is exciting for both readers and writers to discover.

Snipe: Having so many different voices together in one place allows an interesting snapshot into what matters to these writers, what feelings and ideas and trends are active out there right now. Have you noticed any themes uniting the different pieces you’ve received? What does London in 2012 look like through these writers’ eyes?

Holly: The outstanding theme has been a focus on detail. Descriptions are often minute, with the reader able to follow the author’s roving eye across the scene as though they are standing there together. Maybe this is how we all seek to make sense of this vast, vibrant and complex city; by focussing on specific locations at a human level. This reflection of true experience is, I think, what has made the London Clock resonate with our readers. Whether you live or lived in London, or were once a visitor, you are placed back in the middle of the action, often in places that are famous or familiar. Relationships too are a common feature as writers make sense of life in this city by referencing relationships experienced within it. Personal intimacies and private observations are fine things for any piece of work to possess, big or small. The London Clock is giving London a human face and with each new piece another door is opened into the real lives of people grappling with this vast, frantic, wonderful city.

More in-depth interviews:

Helen Babbs of The New Nature on creating a new generation of urban nature writers
Photographer Mike Tsang on the blessing and the curse of growing up a Chinese Londoner
Iain Sinclair and Andrew Kötting on their Olympic pedalo film Swandown
Kate Flowers of CoOperaCo on her mutualised operatic finishing school
Stratford filmmaker Winstan Whitter on what got lost in the gentrification of Dalston

Cirque du Hoxton Overground

In this latest video from Londoner Remy Archer, the morning commute on the Overground becomes a circus train.

A supernatural history of London's haunted parks

Elliot O’Donnell, writer, liar, ghosthunter, owner of an Irish terrier called Ghoul, made his name in the early 20th century with books such as Haunted Houses of London (1909), Werewolves (1912), and Haunted Highways and Byways (1914). Some of his books can now be downloaded for free.

In one chapter of his More Haunted Houses of London (1920), he looks for evidence of the supernatural in London’s public parks. Some of these tales are told to him by the poor and homeless who, without money for a bed, spent their nights in the parks with only each other, the stars, and the shadows for company.

Some happenings he claims to have seen with his own eyes.

Below is a selection of the hauntings O’Donnell recorded. Who of us can doubt him now? Who can say if these mysterious happenings might still be going on…

The whistling stone of Clapham Common

“An old woman, locally known as blue-necked Sally…told me that when she was sleeping on the Common one night she was awakened by the most beautiful whistling imaginable. She said it was soft and sweet, and yet so sad and melancholy that it made her cry…on applying her ear to the stone, near to which she was lying, she was convinced that the mysterious sounds did in very truth issue from it.”

What would cause the stone to whistle?

“Some said an aged pedlar had been murdered there; others, that an old crossing sweeper, who used to sell whistles made from the branches of the trees on the Common, had been found there, frozen to death.”

The pig-wolf of Green Park

One day, O’Donnell was walking a friend’s dog in Green Park when the animal suddenly bolted in terror. His interest piqued, O’Donnell approached the tree from which the dog had fled.

“…as I got within a few feet of the trunk, something big seemed to drop on to the ground close beside me, with a soft thud. I have had many experiences with the unpleasant side of the Unknown, but I do not think anything has ever affected me in quite the same way as this thing. I instinctively felt that it was nothing in the least degree human…something that was frightfull repellant and malignant. I could feel it was trying to fascinate me, trying to reduce me to a state of utter helplessness, and it was only by dint of an almost superhuman effort that I managed to overcome its influence and tear myself away from the spot.”

He tells his story to a tramp. The tramp knows of what he speaks. He knows only too well. He has seen it himself.

“Staring down at me were two eyes – pale eyes that seemed to have no actual colour, but to be wholly animated with spite and hate. The face they belonged to was a curious cross between that of a pig and that of a wolf. The mouth and snout were wolfish, the ears and general contour – piggish. It was quite hairless.”

The glade on Hampstead Heath where death can be foretold

Two sisters in the glade sat upon a bench. One, the elder, cried out in sudden pain. Her stomach was burning. She shouted out that Dr Smith had poisoned her. She did not know a Dr Smith.

The other sister looked across. Her sister’s face was changing, aging. The hair was curling, whitening. The jaw fell open, the chin collapsed. The face was dying. But it was a new face. Their grandmother’s.

The younger sister fainted. When she awoke, all was returned to normal. Both were themselves, and well. Two days later they received a telegram. Their grandmother was dead. She had mistakenly taken poison instead of the medicine prescribed by her doctor…Dr Smith.

They say the glade still exists, where, on certain nights of the year, the future can be foreseen in just this way. You may search for it, if the future is something you really want to know.

The silver birches of Greenwich Park

Perhaps the most extraordinary story of all. Certainly the best written. One night O’Donnell met an educated man among the vagrant sleepers of the Hyde Park, and asked how he had come to fall so low. The man said that he used to teach in Blackheath, until one fine warm summer night as he walked home through Greenwich Park, a weariness came over him and he decided that rather than trudge back to his bed he would sleep the night outside, on a bench beneath a silver birch. Of that silver birch he began to dream, and it was the dream that ruined him. Read his words. How could you resist?

“I became aware of this strange thing bending over me and fanning my cheeks with its breath. Can I ever forget that breath? It was scented sweeter than anything I have ever smelt. Sweeter – ten thousand times sweeter – than the most subtle and delicate perfume one ever inhaled from any woman…I tried to breathe it in, not only with my mouth and nostrils, but through every pore in my skin. It intoxicated, maddened me. But the climax of my joys had not yet come; soft, deliciously soft arms twined themselves round me and lifted me up, up, up, up, until I felt miles away from the earth and right among the stars; and then, as I lay quite still and calm, drinking in and drinking in that indescribably wonderful scent, I was kissed…to attempt to describe my feelings when that mouth touched mine, so softly and gently that although I knew it was there, I could as yet experience nothing more tangible nor material than the most delicate and hardly perceptible of pressures, would be impossible. And then very, very slowly those satin, perfumed lips sank deeper and deeper into mine, til…weary with too much joy, my mind became a blank and was conscious of nothing but a far-away sense of rocking, eternally soothing, sleep-inspiring rocking.”

The man awoke. The daylight had come. He left the tree, but the next night he found that he could not stay away. Night after night he returned to the bench below the tree to repeat his ecstatic dreams. They exhausted him, but he could not give them up. Soon his work began to suffer, his appearance deteriorated, he lost his job, his fiancee and his home. Only the trees were left to him, and he could not let them go.

O’Donnell gave the man threepence, and wished him a good night. Thanks to the trees, he may have had one.

Image – Clapham Common by Jonas Photo on Flickr, under Creative Commons

See also:
Pepys and urethral play – Dr Richard Barnett’s Sick City Project for the Wellcome Trust.
A story from Victorian London – Mary Rainbow and her nameless murdered child

Boris Johnson flown to Italy by Russian oligarch

Boris Johnson was flown out to Italy for two nights last month by the owner of the Evening Standard, new records reveal.

The mayor was gifted two return flights to Perugia, Italy and two nights luxury accommodation by the Russian oligarch Evgeny Lebedev.

Umbria is a favourite holiday retreat of Lebedev.

Boris’s return home was also paid for by the newspaper with current editor and close family friend Sarah Sands picking up the taxi bill from the airport.

Sands was appointed to the job by Lebedev after a personal intervention from Johnson.

Lebedev and Boris are known to be close. Asked about Evgeny last year, he replied

“I am proud to call him a friend and a Londoner,” gushes London’s mayor, Boris Johnson… “This great city of ours would be a lot poorer without him”

Lebedev also described Boris as a friend during his appearance at the Leveson Inquiry. Writing about a recent social occasion he remarked that:

“I was at one stage made the filling of a Johnson sandwich, with Boris on one side and Rachel — his writer sister — on the other. You can never get enough Johnsons, I suppose.”

Former Evening Standard editor Veronica Wadley also remains close to Boris. Recently he gave her a £95k position at City Hall. No other candidates were interviewed for the job.

A spokesperson for the Mayor said that his Umbrian trip was an opportunity for Boris to “relentlessly promote his vision.”

Something the Evening Standard was also keen to do at the last two elections.

City Hall told us:

“The Mayor was in Perugia in a private capacity, at the invitation of Mr Lebedev. He used the invitation as an opportunity to relentlessly promote his vision for London, as he has done on many other occasions with many other media proprietors and editors over many years.”

Earlier this week Boris Johnson spoke out against state regulation of the British press, saying that their “feral fearlessness and ferocity ensures that we have one of the cleanest systems of government anywhere in the world.”

There are many words that you could use to describe the Evening Standard’s treatment of Boris Johnson over the years.

Feral and fearless aren’t two of them.

First Sight: Fun Adults

Wild Beasts? In Rainbows-era Radiohead? There’s a myriad of influences at work here, but to these ears at least the roots of this stunning debut single from Leeds based four-piece Fun Adults lie a little further back: John Martyn perhaps, or even the early ’70s, proto-Prince styling’s of Shuggie Otis (who, coincidentally and unbelievably, played his first ever UK gig this week, at the Jazz Cafe). Check out the equally impressive self-made animated video above.