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Current mood:  relaxed Category: Writing and Poetry
So... a couple of rambling blogs on a theme of random bollocks. Part 1: poetry
My kids overuse the word 'random' (as in 'bizarre', 'spontaneous' or 'surreal') to describe everything vaguely wacky and offbeat that they encounter, including the strange utterings that they each sometimes come out with. Usually phrased as 'OMG that was SO random!' [Top Tip if you are the parent of a toddler... keep a notebook at hand to capture memorable laughter-inducing phrases your children come out with... both they and you will LOVE reading them when they are older]. There's something wonderful about sharing those funny little sayings and they often get adopted into the family vernacular. So for example... we never have pins and needles in our house, but we do suffer from 'sprinkles' ('Mummy Mummy! I've got sprinkles in my arm and they HURT!), etc.
Now, I realise you probably `had to be there' to appreciate this next bit, but I suddenly had a memory, today, of something I shared as a teenager with my Dad, which made me weep tears and tears of laughter at the time, and still makes me chuckle today. It all had to do with Kit Williams' 'Masquerade' - one of the best things ever IN THE WORLD, and a phenomenon which caught Britain by storm in the early 1980s.
It was a treasure-hunt puzzle book, with wonderful illustrations and a story containing clues, which together could lead the reader to discover a real-life treasure in the shape of a golden bejewelled hare, buried somewhere in the UK countryside. This spawned many a successive prize puzzle, and inspired many interest groups and styles of treasure hunt in the following years (more of this another time) ....
Aaaaanyway. I recall that one of the Masquerade illustrations (Tara Tree-tops) included a 4 x 4 number grid emblazoned on a lawn in the background. My Dad and I had pored hours and hours over this book, and indeed got some way to interpreting correctly how the treasure would be located. In the case of the number grid, however, we decided that this was an important cipher which would lead us closer to the truth.... and the prize. We determined, in the course of our detective work, that the grid referred to nothing more complex than words from the facing page, and so we assembled our word grid, counting from the top of the page, and came up with this secret message:
`Far tiny from dreams
To see say say
But Tara to cloud
His to Tara to'
which was clearly total bollocks. The number grid turned out to be a red herring, and the numbers were atomic numbers of elements, which when substituted for their letter-abbreviation counterparts spelt out something to indicate as much. But we had huge fun reciting this 'poem' over and over to each other self-mockingly and pretending it was meaningful. God knows why I still remember that. So sad. LMAO!
I think what reminded me of this was that just the other day, I stumbled across the blog of Spartacus Mills, who had posted a piece on 'How to make a Surrealist story'. Simple experimental cut and paste of words and phrases from newspaper articles to make something new and probably more interesting than the original :-). That appealed to me... but I wondered if the surrealist approach would be better suited to poetry (there must be loads of text books on this, sure, but I can't be bothered to read them). This in turn made me think of 'Jabberwocky', surreal in content but not in form. It's well known that Lewis Carroll made clever use of non-words (neologisms, yay!), which sound real and seem to reflect the correct parts of speech, to create the overall mood and impression of dread in his famous poem:
'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
did gyre and gimble in the wabe.
All mimsy were the borogroves,
And the mome raths outgrabe'
Also total bollocks but hey! bollocks with style ;-). Look HERE for some great commentary on the poem, including interpretation, and computer jargon, French and German versions!
I decided to have a go myself at a hybrid of these approaches. Random picking of words and phrases (using this week's copy of The Big Issue, April 2-8, No. 738), and observation of linguistic form, to create a social poem - chaotic and yet insightful - commentary on life today .... and utter utter utter bollocks!! Here's what I came up with.... why don't you give it a go? I'm sure you could do better, and it's very liberating after a hard day at the office.
Adults often see children,young lovers steal summer kisses.We're living in cemeteries,play alcohol-fuelled party games.Conviction already in meltdown, include kicking civilians,society trying, as huge potentialfor 25 years' violent confidence.Our page something to brag aboutEveryday life carrying a massivePapier mache headHappy, win awards. Wrong:Less than theatrical, a timelydisarmingly handsome Dame Maggieliving on the voluntary sectorabuse of DVD.... in the previous year to zero.
Next: Random Bollocks Part II - Dice Games
8:52 PM
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