Matt Tuckey is a writer from Oldham, England. He covers celebrities, night life, Manchester, fitness, creative writing, social media, psychology and events. Some of this may, in some way, help others. Or maybe it'll just entertain you for a while.
I mentioned the idea for this exercise at a writers’ group about a month ago, and anticipations were high. I’d kept everything under wraps, so nobody knew what they were in for. Here’s what to do…
Everybody at the table has four slips of paper each. We are going to write some words. Try to make them multisyllabic. Write them BIG! On the first slip, write a noun. A thing. On the second, write a verb. A doing word. On the third, write an adjective. A describing word. On the fourth, write an adverb. A word that describes how a verb is done. Adverbs usually end in –ly.
Now put all of the slips of paper into the middle of the table for everyone to see.
I’d like you to pick a word that you like the look of and use that as a title of a poem. We’re going to do a quick rhyming exercise. Pick words from the table and find words that rhyme with these words to make up couplets. Try to rhyme more than one syllable if possible.
Feel free to turn the slips around so you can see them.
We now have fifteen minutes to develop a poem, rhyming as many of these words to any other words you can think of.
Apparently, this was one of the hardest exercises we’ve done, which is possibly why everyone insisted that I read my poem out first!
Here’s my effort. I’m sure you can do better.
BESTIAL
The doors to the zoo open surprisingly
Drawing the animals towards it, enticingly
The cage doors open, the animals are hoping
A life of freedom and peace is approaching
A different lifestyle and acceptance is imminent
For the skunks, the cockatoos and the elephants
The colobus monkey is planning a party
When the front door of the zoo opens bizarrely.
“I can’t explain how important this is for us,”
Says the rainbow lorikeet, with his feathers so splendiferous.
The zoo has provided the best transport they could offer
And the animals ride off in the giant helicopter.
On Fluffy Oakes’s widescreen TV, mounted on his large apartment wall, an orang-utan sits surrounded by multicoloured objects.
“This is how it started,” he says, quietly.
I sit with him on the couch and watch.
The orang is looking up at something, paying attention. An American woman speaks, off camera.
“The. Red. Ball,” she says, clearly and slowly.
The orang looks down. Like a human, you can see him thinking, hesitating. Then with a long hairy arm, he slaps the appropriate object.
“Good!” The woman encourages the orang like a pet dog. “The. Blue. Cube.”
The orang scratches his head. Purses his lips.
I wonder, is he doing this because he’s thinking?
Then he slaps the cube and looks up- presumably to the person speaking, to see whether he has pleased them.
“Good!” the woman gushes. She throws the orang a chocolate bar. He devours it messily.
Fluffy pauses the screen, the orang’s blurred face turned to the camera, chocolate-smeared and overtly enthusiastic.
“A few years ago the Americans started to test the abilities of Orang-Utans just to see how similar they are to us,” says Fluffy. “Then the experiment developed into an attempt to teach apes parts of the English language. It worked. This stuff has been on TV, documented, etcetera. At Oldham Zoo we wanted to take it a little further. We broadened the training programme out to the whole residency. To varying degrees, all the animals understand parts of human language now. The wolves adapted to language the quickest, for obvious reasons. Parrots followed. But other animals… well, they took a lot of work.”
Fluffy takes a sip of his Monkey Shoulder blended malt.
“Each species of animal,” he explains, “develops its own neural pathways- basically a way of remembering something. What they would need to know in the wild- some of it, at least- will always be preprogrammed. Their pathways are set up to learn these things, regardless of whether or not they were born in captivity. At the zoo, some were, some weren’t. My job has been to help each creature to develop new neural pathways- to read a map, to recognise new surroundings… to speak English. We’ve also taught them not to eat each other- and more importantly, not to eat or even harm humans."
“They are ready for release, is what you’re saying.”
“I think so. I’ve developed a day-release programme that allows each creature twenty-four hours away from the zoo. We encourage them to go out, do something productive, experience something new. Then the next day, we’ll gather and discuss what they experienced.”
“Even if the conditioning you gave them means they definitely won't harm people- aren’t they going to deal with a lot of prejudice from the public?”
“Yep. Absolutely. The world is a harsh place,” says Fluffy. I’ve dealt with a lot of shit myself, hence the Martial Arts.
“They don’t have to leave the zoo if they don’t want. But, fucking hell. Some of them need it. We’ve got one lovebird in a unit on his own. If you know anything about lovebirds…”
He raises his eyebrows, waiting for me to complete his thought.
“They come in pairs?”
“Exactly. He needs to get out. Meet new people. See what he can get himself into, so to speak.”
For a situation as unusual as this one, the zoo needs to plan the programme’s beginnings carefully. Handled wrong, it could be a PR disaster. Handled rightly, it could be a historical worldwide cause for celebration- on par with the abolition of slavery in terms of the advancement of human respect.
“I have absolute belief in this programme,” says Fluffy, and he necks his drink and grins at me. The Orang, on the screen behind him, is sitting with a posture not unlike Fluffy’s, with a similar cheesy grin. They’re like distant relatives.
Douglas Quaid: Where am I?
Johnnycab: You're in a Johnnycab.
Douglas Quaid: I mean, what am I doing here?
Johnnycab: I'm sorry. Would you please rephrase the question?
Douglas Quaid: How did I get in this taxi?
Johnnycab: The door opened. You got in. Hell of a day, isn't it?
[Johnnycab rolls his eyes]
-Doug Quaid (Arnold Schwarzeneggar) tries to back-track- with the aid of a robotic taxi driver- in Paul Verhoven's Sci-Fi gem, Total Recall.
You may not have found this blog via a robot-driven taxi straight from the ghettos of Mars, but it seems Arnie has. Sorta. Other people have still found themselves on these pages- albeit in the reading sense- by very more normal ways.
I've manually syndicated this blog's content to a variety of blogging websites, and I'm aware that my Blogger site (http://powerisastateofmind.blogspot.com/) receives only a fraction of my exposure. However, Blogger has a fascinating “Stats” page (Well, it's fascinating to me. Jesus Christ) that tells me how many readers I have- and more.
On my stats page I can now see where people are finding this blog. Recently I've been slamming comments on loads of other sites, and doing this on big blog names like http://Failblog.org has provided a chunk of traffic all of a sudden. I'm also listed on http://alphainventions.com , sort of a scrolling slideshow of blogs from around the world. Where the hell they found mine, I've no idea.
At the bottom of the page, blogger tells me the key search terms that people have used, and hence stumbled across my insane scribblings. Three people wanted to read some “whisky poetry.” I expect I did not disappoint. One person, bizzarely, googled “poem I am a lighthouse”. I Am A Lighthouse is a poem written by guest writer Lynn Myint-Maung, and appears on this blog. It couldn't have been her searching, because I gave the poem the title after she'd given me the text.
The strangest search term was “better business bureau complaints against p&e construction”, something I have never written about. What's p&e?
Aw, shit, I have now. Here comes more of the same.
I have also never written about the need to “think like a mushroom”, although that phrase did bring someone to my site. Perhaps they were looking for this story over at Mel Bosworth's Lit magazine Flash Fire 500, and home to my first publishing acceptance...
Moral of the story? Comment, comment, comment. If you want traffic to your blog, comment loads on really popular blogs and provide a URL for them to follow. And say something funny or unusual. Not that I'm a social media guru or anything, but I've read from those that ARE, like Denise Wakeman, that commenting is how readers find you. I'd agree.
Moving on. Last week saw the demise of a legendary Manchester haunt. Brannigans, on Peter Street, has closed its doors forever after parent company Cougar Leisure Ltd went into administration. I have fond memories of working there in 2003, when 50 Cent's In Da Club had just dropped and Brannigans' DJ helped mainstream radio to overplay the song until no-one could stand it any longer. I also remember cleaning out the supposedly-haunted church- the club itself was set up in the basement of the building at street level. There was a rumour that, a few decades ago, a minister had gone insane and raped a child on the altar, and his ghost still resides in the dilapidated room. Before I worked there, people had told me about glasses flying off the shelves while the staff were cleaning up. (I never saw anything like that happen. One or two might have been thrown by customers, but only rarely.)
I cleaned out the church only once. It was a proud moment, being an iconic part of Manchester. Only a few weeks previous to this, TV ghost-hunter Derek Acorah had presented his show from Brannigans and had become possessed by “Godfrey Parks.”
As you can tell, it was laughable shit (as these ghost shows always are) but Brannigans has always had a connection with the paranormal. I heard the odd clunking noise during my cleaning task, but I put it down to central heating. In a church. That hasn't been used for, what, thirty years...
In other Manchester-related news, you may have heard that the beautiful Jennifer Grace Cook has arrived in town with a mission: to find a husband in twelve months.
Ms Cook, 44, whose script “Joy” was made into a 2009 rom-com movie, has jumped the pond from LA to visit the coolest city on Earth and is now checking out Manchester in search of a “noble man.” I tweeted her to ask if 28 was too young. “Very funny,” she replied. “It's all relative, my dear.”
As Jim Carrey says in Dumb and Dumber, “So you're tellin' me there's a chance!?”
Jennifer, I'd like to welcome you to this fantastic city. If you don't find a man out here, well, then there really is no hope. But I'm sure you will.
If you' like to see how Jennifer is getting on with her quest, check out her blog here:
Celebrity update- I got a reply on Twitter from none other than the lovely Natasha Nice. Y'know. From “the industry.” She's awesome.
I've finished reading Don DeLillo's Libra. It's one of the best novels I've ever read. A semi-fictional biography of Lee Harvey Oswald, the book follows three CIA agents as they devise and execute what was intended to be a failed assassination attempt on John F Kennedy, with the intention of scaring him into attacking Cuba. As we know, it didn't go to plan. The fall guy they set up- a downtrodden ex-army guy who happens to be Oswald, they coerce and utterly betray. Very convincing, with a surprising plot and beautiful descriptions throughout. Without DeLillo, there is no James Ellroy and no Bret Easton Ellis.
Finally, I'd like to inform you that none of this officially matters. No, nothing I say has any relevance. Do you know why? Because I didn't vote in the bi-election. I got there too late on the day. So my opinions on everything are null and void for the next two bastard years. I was going to vote Lib Dem, even though they've been pretty much forced into breaking all their promises by the archaically-minded Tory party. I was massively conflicted. I should have taken the advice of deceased Northern Ireland politician Brian Faulkner.
“You can do three things in Irish politics,” Faulkner once said. “The right thing, the wrong thing or nothing at all. I've always thought it's best to do the wrong thing than nothing at all.”
Give me a fruitful error any time, full of seeds, bursting with its own corrections. You can keep your sterile truth for yourself.
~Vilfredo Pareto, Italian Engineer / philosopher
Do not show weaknesses. Particularly around women.
Be careful what you put on the internet, and where. Some things- for the sake of one’s career- do not want to be seen in the same place as your work info. The internet may be a big place, but the world is a small one.
I might have been better off on the dole. Currently, I’m working too many hours for housing benefit and not enough to gain working tax credits. Last year my wage was slashed from a grade three admin post to a grade one. I’m still on the same part-time contract. I fall perfectly into the “getting screwed by the government” bracket. I always have worked, though, on-and-off. Permanently, in fact, since 2007.
You might be the greatest dancer in the club, but if the club isn’t playing decent dance music, nobody will care about your skills. They’ll just think you’re a tool.
Similarly, if you’re doing something right, keep doing it. If something doesn’t work, don’t keep doing it. Hence, you can expect to see me in Stalyvegas and Manchester at the weekends, and not Oldham. See previous point. Giggity giggity.
Nobody wants to read your negative, bitchy, attention-seeking status updates. Keep everything you put on Facebook POSITIVE- no matter how utterly shit life can be…
To the credit of those around me, I’ve learned a lot of marketing knowledge and how to use social media to my advantage.
Again, thanks to other people I’ve learned how to throw a good punch, stop people throwing them at me, how to pop people’s arms out of their sockets and how to split people’s knee-caps open. I must get back into MMA soon. Gonna be getting rusty!
Also due partly to the efforts of others, I've sharpened up my writing and had a few acceptances here and there.
There are many other things I’ve learned- lots of it involving women- but, as the first point explains, I can’t tell you on here. It involves telling you what I didn’t know. Which is what I’ve just spent this entire blog doing.
In 1996, Baz Luhrmann made William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, an updated movie version of the tragic play set in contemporary LA but retaining all the original text. It won an Academy Award for Art Direction, and another 11 other filmmaking awards worldwide. An astounding movie, it firmly defined Luhrmann as a creative heavyweight in Hollywood. The original Shakespeare dialogue was almost totally unchanged, with the plot fully intact. The setting was updated to the gang-ran streets of Venice Beach L.A., which perfectly allowed Luhrmann to present the doomed romance and scenes of devastating violence with spectacular effect.
Let's see Luhrmann bring Shakespeare's darkest play into the twenty-first century. Macbeth, with its power-hungry protagonist, its folklore and its macabre themes of murder, sleep, double-crossings and evil ambition, is ripe for a modern-day update. Keeping the story set in Scotland would be a start, not least to bring some film industry attention to the UK. It would also ensure that, visually, it would not mirror R&J. There is no way that, with a British setting, Luhrmann would be going through the directorial motions to make this film. Macbeth would be original, modern and distinctly Scottish- as Shakespeare’s play was, no doubt, on its original release.
Similarly to Luhrmann’s Romeo and Juliet- the violence would have to be presented under the guise of gang warfare for believability reasons (the play pretty much opens on the battlefield and many of the characters die in violent ways) and the prophesying witches may have to become astrology-obsessed eastern-European gypsies (fairly believable by today’s standards, yes?)
Just writing this is making me enthusiastic. Hell, I might go and read the Letts notes tonight. If you’re equally fired, join me on this venture. If you’re not familiar, you’ll be in for a treat when this all works out.
If the people of Facebook can get Rage Against the Machine to beat X-Factor’s morbid output to a Christmas number one chart position, then there’s no reason that we can’t shape this future movie classic- starting right here on this website.
Join today- and pass this message on until it reaches Mr. Luhrmann himself!
Trying to make some sense of it all,
But I can see that it makes no sense at all,
Is it cool to go to sleep on the floor,
'Cause I don't think that I can take anymore
-Stuck in the Middle With You, Stealer's Wheel
A blurry and hungover start to 2011 has already seen the passing of two entertainment legends.
RIP Pete Postlethwaite. Loved him as Kobayashi in The Usual Suspects. It was great to see a northern fella take on Hollywood. And if Speilberg can call him “The best actor in the world,” then I think it's safe to say Mr. Postlethwaite won that battle.
Gerry Rafferty, one half of 70's duo Stealer's Wheel, also left us. Being 28, I didn't exactly grow up with his music. But for me, his name will forever be synonymous with torturing L.A Policemen. Quentin Tarantino first introduced me to Rafferty's music, when he used his “Dylan-esque pop bubblegum favourite from April of 1970” in a brutal- and now iconic- scene in Reservoir Dogs. I could never understand why the radio presenter in that scene had such a monumentally dull voice. A Seventies thing, maybe? He sounds more boring than I was on student radio when I was sixteen. Back then on a “broadcast” to the college canteen, my radio show about film director James Cameron was so gratingly mundane- as was my presenting voice- that I cleared out the canteen area and no-one was sitting there to listen to the next person's show. Ce la vie.
But what about me? What have I achieved? Due to wintery illness, not a great deal. But at least I'm still alive. *Inhales through teeth...*
Oh, adult entertainer Jelena Jensen replied to me on Twitter with a nice message. She even retweeted mine! What a legend.
For this week’s writing exercise we were all given three slips of paper. We wrote a word on each piece, then placed them all in the middle of the table. We then picked out the words we liked the look of, and weaved a story using these words with fifteen-minutes on the clock.
I pulled out…
COCKROACH
FATE
FELT
Try this at your group- let us know how it goes! Here's my little vignette- I hope you like...
----
Roger tied his scarf tight and turned up his collar, stepping from the pub into the dimly lit cobbled street. He wished he’d brought his hat. His scalp started to tingle in the frosty air. He stroked his hair- a subconscious gesture- only realising he was doing so when he felt the lump.
He gasped and threw his hand out. Something was still clinging to his fingers. The bug- large, with two antenna big enough to pick up FM signals- hissed like a snake.
“Jesus Christ!” he said, flicking his arm like it was on fire. The bug landed on the arched cobbles on the road, belly up.
“Hey,” said the bug.
Roger froze.
“Hey. Come on. I didn’t ask for that.”
“What. The. Fuck.”
“Come here.”
Silence.
“Yes, yes, I’m a talking cockroach. Get over it. Look,” said the bug, who was facing away from Roger. “My legs reached the ground before. Turn me the right side up.”
“Okay,” said Roger. “Who are you, like?”
“I am Frederick, your saviour cockroach. I’m here to give you an extra life.”
“No thanks,” said Roger. “I don’t believe that shit.”
“Seriously. Turn me over and I’ll explain.”
Roger stepped out into the road. Grimacing, he turned the roach over. At first he thought it was screaming. Then he realised that the sound was car tyres grinding over the road’s slick cobbles. The car slammed into the shop, bursting into flames, right where Roger had been stood seconds before.
