Some Thoughts on Easter

Firstly, I’d like to wish everyone a happy Easter Sunday – I hope you all get time to spend loving moments with friends and family. I’d also like to say a few words on the subject of Easter itself, but don’t worry, I’m not going to argue with anyone, because this day, least of all, should be about petty squabbles between blips in the unlimited and expanding cosmos.

Some of you may know that I feel Easter is underrated. This is probably because, unlike Christmas, it is more overtly Christian. Now, obviously, I don’t think that the crucifixion happened on this precise day two thousand years ago, but as this is the time we have elected to celebrate it (or rather the time the Normans chose to celebrate it because they didn’t want to take away a holiday from the Anglo-Saxons in case they got “medieval on their asses”), then we should do something special. Easter is the time of rebirth, whether it’s because of the cyclical renewals of Ishtar, the return of Persephone, or the resurrection of Christ, renewal and rejuvenation is a very important thing to celebrate. We all need it. In fact, we are all doing it constantly. Our cells copy each other every two to three years (depending on the person) and these copies take over from their predecessors before the old one dies – the copies degenerate because, much like cloning, a copy of a copy is never as good as the original. Cells can only achieve this 46 times and then it’s impossible (scientists are working on breaking this to make us immortal, apprently…).

In the light of this, we see that it is in our very biology to wipe the plate clean and start afresh, and if we don’t do this, we die, plain and simple.

You may be wondering what’s sparked all this interest in regeneration. Well, in a few days time, my parents are going to be moving house in Bournemouth. I’ll still be in a similar area; I’ll still be there with all my old friends, but nonetheless it’s a strange feeling to be dismantling the house that I have built, to be looking through dusty legions of old forgotten toys and notes, to take out paintings and pictures I did at eight and realise that however imaginative I think I am my younger self dreamed up a hundred worlds: each one so sprawling and boundless that they take up hundreds of pages. I have literally over two thousand pages of drawings I did of maps of fantasy worlds. I also have over a thousand pages of drawings of the creatures and people that in habit them.

I’ve kept most of the art, gotten rid of the random notes, and had a general clear out. It’s been hard, funny, and therapeutic, and overall, I feel ready for a new home, and a new lease – and what’s more, it seems beautifully appropriate that all this is happening over Easter, the time of rebirth, the time of second comings.

So whether you believe that he walked out of that tomb or not, whether you’re a cynic (cold hearted or otherwise), don’t care, care evangelically, or just want an excuse to have time off, take my advice. Go through some old stuff. Save some of it, get rid of the stuff you don’t need. It will feel like you’ve literally purged your mind of centuries of junk.

And remember – you don’t have to come back from the dead to be reborn.

Thank you all! Happy Easter!

Joseph Sale is a poet, novelist, and writer.

If you like what you read – please follow Joseph on twitter @josephwordsmith, and make sure you check out his website at: www.joseph-sale-poetry.webs.com

‘The Echoes’ – poem set to music

Hey everyone,

This is my new crazy project – I feel it deserves a little bit of explaining, and I’m also going to ask a big favour of all of you! Basically, as you all well know by now, I’m a Muse fanatic. I love them. I have every album they have ever produced. I have their T-shirts. I saw them at Reading and will be seeing them again in May. To me, they are everything that music should be.

When someone asked me what my ‘dream gig’ would be, I said, without that much thought, that I’d love to be a warm-up act for Muse at Wembley stadium, and have 75,000 people hear my spoken-word and poetry! Well, it’s a long shot, but still, a man must dream or he’ll never manifest a future.

With this is mind, I’ve decided to start small and work my way up. I’ve taken their song, Isolated System, which is a true masterpiece (in fact it’s GENIUS in every sense of the word), and written a poem to go over the top of it. The music is perfect on its own, but I thought its lack of a vocal melody and the feelings it evokes would be perfect tonally for a poem to accentuate it and maybe add a few other twists? Who knows…

But apart from the lack of a vocal melody, why did I choose this song? For me, it’s one of the greatest examples of a song sonically representing what its content, or meaning, is intending. The repetitive piano melody overlays key changes, tempo alterations, bass variations and more, but it always stays the same: it is always in a loop, and it is always in an isolated system. The way the song builds into the sonorous crescendo of ghostly voices is not only spine tingling, but represents humanity’s urge to defy the laws of entrophy that exist in this universe. Creativity and expansion is juxtaposed with complete degenerations, and at the end, even as the energy and power of the song runs down, the song, symbolic of humanity itself, is still striving for the sublime excellence of true art. Just as it reaches it, the song fades away and the woman’s vocie reverberates on a loop.

I thought that this subject matter had great scope for poetical interpretation, and I aimed to take things a little further still – but imagining humanity’s legacy in the aftermath of complete entrophy. I hope you enjoy it.

Now to the main point. It’d be unbelievably epic if Muse could see this video. I’d really like them to re-tweet it, although that is a longer shot still! But it doesn’t hurt to try! To achieve this aim, I’m asking you [once again] for a few seconds of your time to link this onto your Twitter and send it @muse so that they see it – but only do it if you really enjoyed the video of course!

Thanks so much – I owe you once again.

 

The Death of Eros

A video of Joseph Sale performing ‘The Death of Eros’ from his published collection: ‘Unconstructed Constellations’

What would happen if Eros went to a night-club…?

Dedicated to Valentine’s Day.

There is Beauty in the Void

I have been asked what type of writer i am. What type of movements i follow or give credence to.

This is my answer.

It is my belief that art is ultimately the expression of beauty, whether emotional, physical or spiritual. I do not mean to suggest that all art is pretty, or vain, or trite or harmonic; beauty can be found in tragedy, in the resolution against suffering, or in the courage facing the void.

It has often been said that form is restricting, though true, the fallacy is that restriction is a negative. If anyone could do anything in society, the world would be an uninhabitable place run by anarchy and fear. Order is necessary to frame something into the construction of the beautiful. Why? You might ask, do I say that beauty is only in the constructed and the ordered. It is because our minds perceive the world in an ordered fashion.

There is a body of modernist and post-modernist thought that will largely disagree with this concept. They will say that the most accurate reflection of a human mind’s workings is in ‘stream of consciousness’ – a download of irrational and often manically unconstructed information and sensory stimulus – information which is loosely chained together and leads onto wild tangential distractions form the ultimate narrative.

I disagree profoundly with this idea.

The mind, although at times prone to wild chains of thought, most certainly does not work like that in its entirety. In fact, for six thousand years we have been taught that the most appealing thing to the mind is a story. Even people with severe mental difficulties can understand complex ideas and situations if they are explained in a story form. The mind seeks structure, and seeks to structure itself, and seeks to structure our lives: hence the human is such a creature of habit.

I agree, however, that too much habit, too much rigour and formulaic structure is a hindrance. This is why our mind is also excited by the deconstruction, or the breaking of form – such as we see in the brilliant half-rhyme at the end of Robert Frost’s The Road Not Taken. However, modern thought has mistaken this delight in the small and intelligent exceptions to form by assuming that complete anarchic oblivion is what the mind desires and operates on – hence dub-step, a deconstruction of musical principles, modern art, a deconstruction of classical techniques. Money enough to pay employees to place a dead shark in a septic tank replaces the intense skill-levels required to produce such masterpieces as the statue of David, or the Mona-Lisa. I am not entirely disregarding ‘concept art’ or ‘experimental music’, as I believe experimentation and improvisation are key factors in producing masterpieces. If Bach’s Prelude no. 1 did not have the twelve bars of discordance in the middle of it, the resolution would be meaningless. But the discord is made brilliant by the fact it is a slow, and small resistance to the formal structure of the logical chord progression.

Ultimately, this argument can also spill onto philosophical and theological grounds, though I will not say too much about that in this particular essay. At the moment, the popular trend seems to be to view this world as a cold, random accident in a universe desolate of meaning, that one day will be absorbed into the illimitable blackness of a void of anti-matter.

You are welcome to hold this viewpoint, but it will give you nothing.

In fact, most people that maintain this view for extended periods in their life end up committing suicide. What I am saying is that, in some sense, it doesn’t matter whether there is, or is not, a god. We have to believe in an architect for our mind to healthily comprehend its surroundings. Many worshippers of Dawkins will say that this is self delusion, but once again I would disagree. Quantum Physics has already determined that we can alter this universe by merely observing it. Control groups were able to change the result of a random number generator by simply concentrating on it, and they were also able to raise and lower the acidity levels of water. There are innumerable reports of people experiencing emotions and sensations akin to telepathy: for example, picking up the phone and being about to call someone and then being called by them that instant, or waking up thinking about a person in the morning who you haven’t seen in ten years, and then bumping into them that same day. Almost every person I know has admitted to me they have cases of déjà-reve or dreaming something before it happens. To quote Dirk Gently from Douglas Adam’s novel: “I believe in the interconnectedness of all things.” – deny it at your own peril.

I know that many people will object to this reassertion of the value of considering the world in an ordered, beautiful, and purposeful way. Some people will also dismiss the evidence I have provided as a self-created fantasy to make my life seem prettier, and to make poverty and hardship seem easier. It is none of these things. An afterlife doesn’t devalue this world, it actually makes it more important, because, to quote Maximus Decius Meridius: “What we do in life echoes in eternity.”

And how does this relate to writing? Remember the profound interconnectedness of all things. Writing is the tool of thought, and if thought operates in structure, then writing that truly speaks to the spirit should also operate in structure. You can’t have your cake and eat it. You can’t praise Shakespeare’s sonnets and then tell me that form is dead. You can’t tell me there isn’t a god and then scream at the cosmos for things to be better. You probably now thinking, that if form is so wonderful, why do so many people reject it  – smart ass? The answer is simple. Responsibility.

To accept a form to the universe is to accept that you have a purpose to fulfil, a destiny if you will, and that’s a pretty scary idea. Similarly in writing, I hear a lot of people say ‘I didn’t want to use the rhymes because it’s too restrictive, I want to say what I mean’. The thing is I reject this statement. I think if you spent time striving to find the word that would rhyme, but that would also avoid cliché, and would embody everything you wanted to say: then you’d make yourself a better poet. Brutal, I know, but true. The English language is incredible. Everyone seems to enjoy hating on its limitations at the moment, but let’s think about its possibilities. It has more words than any other and is continually absorbing phrases every day because it has the capacity to synthesise its own idiom with others. We also have a language that naturally falls into iambic pentametre because we have pronouns external to the words themselves. We also have a greater variation of rhyme – it’s easier to rhyme in Italian because they have declension endings to their words, (hence that the terza rima form of Dante’s Divine Comedy can be maintained for the full 100 cantos!), however, as declensions are all the same, its quintessentially similar to rhyming –ing with –ing. We have the possibility of para-rhymes, consonantal rhyme, as well as rich rhyme and a wide variation of pronunciation which other languages cannot recreate, which is why most continental theatre companies will perform Shakespeare in the original English, because they would prefer to hear it in its original glory and understand the feel of the words than have it in their own tongue and lose the dexterity of construction.

Having said that I absolutely adore Italian poetry, and one of my favourite novels of all time is written in Finnish (obviously I read in translation). I’m also not suggesting that translation isn’t a good thing, it most certainly is. I merely meant to point out that our own language has strengths too, especially when it comes to poetry, and we should not be afraid to use them to intensify the power and structure of our work.

How to conclude? This was meant to be a paragraph for a university module about what kind of writing I practice, but it became this… perhaps it’s because I sense that the world needs some form right now? I’m tired of playing verbal games with my peers, and not talking about when I think something is an act of fate, or deliberately intended to teach us a lesson. I’m tired of telling people that when I spontaneously burst into tears after hearing the first bar of The Moonlight Sonata that I didn’t know why, because I did, and it was because the universe had kaleidoscoped into one ecstatic moment of understanding. It’s because I heard more than simply a set of sounds produced by under dampened strings on my piano teacher’s upright; I heard beyond the flawless E# minor chord progression, I heard that there was, as Einstein put it, “music in the spheres”. Whether it’s a god, or an architect of matter, or an alien civilisation, or simply our own consciousness creating the holographic verse as we perceive it (like a dream), it doesn’t matter.

It only matters, that we listen.

And that’s what kind of writer I am.

Joseph Sale © 2013

THE END OF THE WORLD – THANK YOU EVERYONE

Friends, loved ones, Romans, countrymen, etc etc – as some of you may know, there is a slightly (very slightly) elevated chance that the world will end tomorrow according to the prophecy of the Mayan civilisation. For those of you that dismiss this ‘ignorant omen from an ancient civilisation’ – I would warn you that the astrological perceptivity of this ancient people has yet to be rivalled, and they didn’t have telescopes… therefore I personally take what they say a little seriously (but not too seriously).

Just in case our world is incinerated, zombified, absorbed into the molecular destruction of a black hole, or is obliterated by a meteorite – I thought I’d write this small piece thanking everyone for the great times.

Thank you all for the great times.

I have lived my life in a state of sublime arrogance, and for those that are close to me, I deeply apologise. The only reason I am alive to day was because of the concerted efforts of friends and loved ones on my part, and a faith that I would, despite the misguided prophecies of my teachers, somehow make it. First and foremost therefore, on the list of thank yous, must be my mother and father.

You have been exceptional, wonderful and truly dazzling. When no one else could bat an eyelid for the crazy and slightly rotund individual banging on about aliens and monsters perceptible only through the lens of childhood, you did, and for that I can offer only my deepest thanks. You have taught me, trained me, loved me, and inspired me – there are no two people I would rather emulate than you, and as I have a lot of idols, I hope you will see this compliment for what it is.

To Angela – the woman who trained me in home education. You were Chiron, and I, the fledgling. There could have been no greater teacher for me.

Second must go to my old friends, and my new. Connor Davey, we have had good and bad times, but through it all, you have been the Samwise Gamgee of my journey through life. Without your ability to say things as they are, to cut through the crap and eloquate truth, and to remind me that sometimes the best and only response to life’s chastisements is to tell them to fuck off, has been more invaluable than I can express. For those of you reading my online series, you might guess which of the main characters is based on Connor.

Michael, you’ve been with me for longer than I can actually remember – I feel like no words can be spoken, just a companionable silence at the end of everything.

I must also thank Rob, Dom and Ellie, and the rest of the B’mouth gang. I may not see any of you much nowadays Indeed, I may never see any of you again (unless of course this really is the final judgement) – but I do hope you will appreciate my heartfelt thanks for all the amazing times we had, the banter, the love, and the fellowship that bound us for those childhood days.

Liam Flower, who I call Liam War – you have been one of my most loyal, trusty, and stolid friends throughout all the years we’ve known each other since Warhammer Sunday Club. Yes people, for all those people who keep asking how I know Liam, and not getting a satisfactory answer, is we’re both geeks and fucking love the fantasy. Liam, you are going to go onto great things, either in a post apocalyptic capacity, or in a normal one. Keep playing that guitar – and you’ll be the next Cobain, I’ve no doubt in my mind.

Next in the list has to be the St Peter’s crew. There are too many people from this golden 2 year era of my life to begin to give each one a paragraph, though undoubtedly each one deserves one. Ben Howe, Joe, Tom, Rhys, Ollie, CJ – then the Barmock crew, Faith, Kate, CJ, Zoey and Emma – and then the drama legends: Scott, James, Max, Andy, and then the English students: Steph, Ollie Higgins, and even the Btecs despite our initial difficulty. To all you glorious folk I say thank you.

But I also have new friends who have been a real light in my life. Ben (Norris) – you were the first person I met at Birmingham, and we have had a dynamic friendship to say the least. Through all the hilarity of people imagining us at each other’s throats, to performing ‘Lose Yourself MK 2’, to living together, and to ever sharpening each other’s poetical wits, it has been a truly glorious companionship, and if the world doesn’t end, long may it continue.

Sam who I call ‘Samwise’ – you have been a remarkable friend to me, in more ways than you could perhaps realise. My friendship with you Sam is not just important because of all the ludicrous jokes, banter and wit, but also, because you have taught me something very profound. It is from your example Sam that I am attempting to learn humility. As, in the order of the seven virtues established in contradiction to the seven sins, Humility is the direct opposition to Pride, and therefore is the greatest of all virtues, I hope that you will see your exalted status in my perception.

Andy, who is called ‘Cash More’ – you too have taught me more than you probably realise. It’s been wonderful, it’s been funny, and most of all it’s been epic.

Elisha, Jenna, Lucy, Yas – my wonderful flatmates, then there’s Sean Colletti, my great inspiration, and Charlie and Giles and Alana and Amie from Writer’s Bloc – there are too many, there are just too many to name!

This is turning out to be a biblical blog, but then again given that it may possibly be the end of the universe as we understand it, I feel this is somehow justified. However there’s only one more person, but it’s a case of last but not least.

Michelle – if this is the last day of the world, there is no one I could wish to spend it with more than you. In two years you have transformed my life in what can only be described as a cataclysmic way. I hope that, if the world doesn’t implode into a timeless silence in which the dusts of our civilisation become clouds vaguely stirred by expulsions of gaseous space-matter, with your love, I can become a better man.

 

That’s all folks,

 

Merry Christmas if we make it

 

Joe

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Little Machine Review

Hey everybody, it’s that time of the month again where a blog suddenly catapults itself out of the conundrum and chaos of a mind not wholly out of adolescence! Today I wanted to write about a new band I’ve heard about, and saw live at Birmingham Book Festival, and who, quite frankly, blew me away.

LiTTLe MACHiNe are a 3 piece group that put the works of great writers to music, and they do it brilliantly. Using the natural cadences and rhythms of the language they build up evocative sound-scapes, catchy choruses, and then develop spine-tingling instrumentals from these words, allowing the music to speak as well as the words.

At Bham Book Festival they did a set which ran forward in time from ‘Sappho’ (c600 BC) all the way up to Carol Anne Duffy’s ‘Mean Time’ (1995). Some of the poems had sections repeated as refrains, but many were performed without alteration: the lead singer has an incredible voice, a voice I think sounds better live, in fact, than on the recordings, and he does full justice to the emotional content of the poems.

For me, in terms of adaptation, sheer power, and effectiveness, the two winners of the evening were Shakespeare’s ‘Fear No More’, and Percy Shelley’s ‘Ozymandias’, both of which left many of the audience members literally shaken. In ‘Fear no More’ they used an interplay of backing vocals echoing the lead singer, granting an eerie sense of spiritual vivification to the motif: ‘Come to dust!’ – the guitar solos were also electrifying, and did not feel like a juxtaposition on the classical poetry, but rather a true embodiment of its intention. LiTTLe MACHiNe’s rendition of ‘Ozymandias’ was similarly stunning, ending with a protracted piano, acoustic and electric guitar instrumental that seemed to rise and fall and ululate just like a dune, capturing the final image of the ‘lone and level sands’ beautifully. The music was grand in its way, but eventually peters out into nothing, a perfect reflection of Ozymandias’s own destiny.

Below is a link to their website, and their Downloads page, which allows you to listen to a lot of their music for free. So if you feel inspired to combine music and poetry, start with this band, as they are truly masters in this area of expertise.

http://www.little-machine.com/downloads/

Thanks very much for reading this blog, follow it, or my Twitter account, to keep up with the online series ‘THE DOOR IN THE MOUNTAIN’, news about events, collections, books, music, reviews and much more!

Peace to all.

 

 

What’s Your Favourite-Ever Love Song?

Hey everyone, it’s been a while since I wrote a blog, partly due to me starting my second year of University, and the work coming thick and fast from the word go: I can’t complain however, as I truly love what I study and enjoy every minute of it. However, to break up the intensely literary train of things I’ve been posting about (poetry, prose, and all that jazz) I thought I’d do a post about love, and more importantly, invite you to send in your votes as to your favourite EVER love song – big thing to decide? Sure, but if you want you can just list the candidates!

As I’ve asked you to share, I’ll share something of my own. You might be surprised to find that my favourite love song is not by Muse, in fact, it’s by Dire Straits, and it’s called ‘Tunnel of Love’. This song is quite hidden away, most people now haven’t heard about it unless they LOVE Dire Straits or are really into that era of music, but it was never going to be a famous hit single, or top the charts, for a number of reasons:

1)    It’s too clever. Mark Knopfler, the author of this masterpiece, was an English Literature student with a First Class Honours, and it shows in the lyrics.

2)    Even the studio version is 8 minutes long: not great for the radio.

3)    It’s too epic.

Why do I love this song so much? Well, there’s several reasons for that too, but the primary one is the volta. The word ‘volta’ means ‘turn’, and its normally a literally term particularly relevant to sonnets. Every sonnet has a turning point, usually at line 9, but sometimes later, and in Shakespeare’s case, even on the last line. The volta is critical, because it makes the poem. A poem pursuing an interesting subject matter is suddenly resolved as the volta ‘turns’ it onto another issue altogether, sometimes deeper, and normally revelatory. Sometimes the volta is an external epiphany, and sometimes it comes from within, but anyway, I am well off topic.

The Tunnel of Love has a volta just like a poem. It starts out all rock ‘n’ roll, up-tempo, classic riffage, with a funky organ and cool bass. The lyrics tell the story of a man in a love affair taking place a fair ground:

“Getting crazy on the waltzers but it’s the life that I choose
Sing about the sixblade sing about the switchback and a torture tattoo
And I been riding on a ghost train where the cars they scream and slam
And I don’t know where I’ll be tonight but I’ll always tell you where I am.”

The frivolity of the affair is summed up with the ridiculous couplets, and the energetic descriptions of the rides. But come 5:55, that all changes. In a brilliant bridge we suddenly get this segment of what can only be called poetry, the tempo slows, the chord patterns change, the imagery moves from ridiculous and fun to beautiful and symbolic, everything suddenly flips on its head:

And girl you look so pretty to me: just like it always did.
Like the Spanish City to me: when we where kids

And then Mark Knopfler launches into a guitar piece that was nominated: “The most heartbreaking solo of all time.”

The song starts off about a frolic in a theme park with a ‘Girl I dig…’ – she calls him ‘the perfect stranger’ and says ‘maybe we should keep it like this…’ – and then, from this frivolity, in an almost Shakespearean twist, comes the tragedy of a broken heart, an unrequited affection (or an affection only physical on her part and emotional on his), and where his words stop, his guitar speaks.

Every-single-damn-time I listen to this song I get teary.

So anyway, that’s me, please, share your love-songs and if you like, your reasons behind it! Thanks for reading, and please feel free to comment!