Category: status

Did a phoner early this morning with a games company to commence a consultation job, my shoulder is out, water is still coming out of the bathroom in the wrong way, plumber incoming, and it’s still way too cold – June 2 and I’m having to run the heater in the office!

We got the final logo files for DEPARTMENT OF MIDNIGHT, and I’ll show one version in the newsletter on Sunday.

ON DECK: Since I have a plumber coming in, I’m going to have to pull an eleven-hour shift in the office just because I’m not going to get a clear five-hour run. I need uninterrupted blocks of time, and it takes me a while to get into the right headspace, so having to break for an hour at 3 to deal with the plumber will fuck everything up. I really need to hustle now, because I have about ten days to get a first draft done on the job that commenced today.
INBOX: 81
LISTENING: Unclassified


OUTSIDE: what’s the headline that caught my eye

It’s not 14. It’s barely 13. Local cat’s face says it all. So I lost yesterday to failing to repair a pipe, tweaking my shoulder and wrist, and a long emergency family phone call. The temperature is close to a record low. I’ve done so little writing that I laid in bed at three am wide awake and thinking about writing. And I still have to find a plumber who’ll answer the phone. And a friend just asked me if I know any “retail futurists,” so I’m wondering if I’m still asleep.

ON DECK: all the things
INBOX: 76
LISTENING: Chris Watson has completed a project he started with the late Philip Jeck
LAST WATCHED: THE GALLOWS POLE episode 1, which was gorgeously directed, written and acted – and I have to mention the acting because a lot of dialogue and motion had the feel of improv, weaving in and out of the script. This was some killer television, and to get this right on the heels of SUCCESSION finishing was lovely. I also note the touches of folkloric English wyrd, and the berserk Sixties folk-horror psychedelia end credits, with pleasure.

OUTSIDE: apparently Kode9 and Burial are making a record together

15C my arse. I have a pull in my shoulder from hunching up against the cold in my sleep. But those are definitely the beginnings of berries. If the wind drops from the current howling gale tomorrow, I’ll be able to feed them. Right now, a pour from a hose or can blows sideways.

I have to fix the bath. A pipe has become unseated somewhere and it dropped herself’s drained bathwater into a downstairs room. I do not have time to fix the bath. I will nonetheless fix the bath. This is why Georges Simenon had a home staff and put a big Do Not Disturb sign on his door. I have to rewrite a bad script and read development materials and work on an outline today and also crawl under a bath. And start the newsletter for Sunday.

ON DECK: My script offends me so I am chopping bits off it. Reading the development materials for a creative consultant gig ahead of a phoner with the principles om Friday morning.
INBOX: 72
LISTENING: a random Sonnov piece
OUTSIDE:

Balé Literal is a tool of poetic resistance, an exhibition-dance turned into a living organism. It is a movement made up of a varied repertoire of dangling object-works, set in motion by a group of people orchestrated by the Brazilian artist Laura Lima (Minas Gerais, 1971). Balé because it is an invitation to a communal dance. Literal because it subverts the meaning of things, mobilising the subversive ambivalence of the poetic. Conceived as a collectively activated mode of encounter, Balé Literal is a choreography of words, objects and people moving together to the rhythm of our errant times.

It’s actually a bank holiday here for some reason – I swear we’ve had four of them this month – and I guess it’s a holiday in the US too, but I’m back online anyway. I don’t feel like my head is completely together, but I need to get moving now. But probably not today, because I have plants to tend to and seeds to sow, and we took in three new rescue chickens at the weekend that I have to keep an eye on.

ON DECK: I’m halfway through a consult job, and across a script and two outlines, marking up the boards, setting calls, making plans and trying to wake up
INBOX: 71. I’ll be picking up most email after 5.
READING: TLS, currently. I have a longgggg reading queue to get to.
LAST WATCHED: SUCCESSION final episode
OUTSIDE: A Day Inside Putin’s Surreal Television Empire

I have been accused of going goblin mode. So I will embrace it. Sunday’s newsletter actually covers a big part what slowed me down this past week. But mostly I just don’t have my shit together enough yet and now I’m behind by an extra week.

Anyway, I’m staying shut down here until May 29th.

I need to spend this week getting a proper hold on a bunch of things, and to finish off a few things, so I’m shutting some activity levels down again.

The sycamore tree is now in full leaf. I have a lot to do in the garden, but I have more to do indoors.

ON DECK: Trying to compress three days’ work into two, because I’m recording on Friday, apparently. I dunno which episode of DEPT. MIDNIGHT we’re recording, but I’ve been told to hold the day, so holding I am.
INBOX: 70. Catching up.
READING: Just finished PIRANESI, casting around for what’s next.
OUTSIDE: “Police arrest man in gimp suit who jumped in front of motorist in Somerset”

Totally lost track of time today, so here’s a photo of the squirrel that wrecks all my plants every day. He is a criminal and should be in prison. However, it is the law in England that if one traps or otherwise imprisons a grey squirrel, one is legally obliged to kill it and is subject to legal sanction if one releases it, because it is a destructive invasive species. So I continue to let it wreak havoc, and am putting chicken wire around the young trees and over the vegetables so he cannot kill them. And, yes, I give him peanuts.

Newsletter went out Sunday. I am scripting, I have a lot of reading to do, I’m scheduling recording sessions, I’m in a few conversations, and I’m… I dunno. Slightly behind the curve, slightly frustrated. I spent the long weekend in notebooks and have nothing much to show for it, just some germs of ideas. Onward. More coffee.