Edgar Allan Poe
Poems I read:
- A Valentine
- The Raven
- A dream within a dream
- Evening Star
- Annabel Lee
- The Bells
- Alone
- Fairyland
Top 3 favourites from these were Fairyland, Annabel Lee, Alone.
I liked one of these lines especially : All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream.
I quite like the idea that this may not all be real life, and that one day we might wake up and start again.
Born 1809 Boston USA - Died 1849 Aged 40.
Best known for his Gothic fiction, themes of death. Dark romanticisim genre.
Edouard Manet - The Raven illustrations
Inspired me to want to draw birds!
Guy Browning
"How to..." 1999-2009 The Guardian.
These are quite humorous, for example 'How to Blow' delving into puns of the word, what they mean in all contexts, with all possible scenarious involved with this.
I really liked 'How to be a recluse' and I think an illustrative guide would suit this.
Humorist, after-dinner speaker and film director.
William S. Burroughs
Naked Lunch - audio. Quite difficult to understand, but a really interesting man.
The more I listened the more I wanted to know about him, what drives his writing.
Speaking about heroin : "The damage to health from addiction is minimal." Interviewer adds: "But it has done things to your soul?"
"Why do junkies never bathe? I don't know, they're a bit like cats, they don't like the feel of water on their skin." I thought this was an interesting quote to illustrate.
Burroughs advice for young people (audio) the ones I found most powerful:
- Never interfere in a boy and girl fight
- Beware of whores who say they don't want money
- Avoid fuck-ups
....Pretty sound advice I would say!
Burroughs on dreams:
- I looked in the mirror, my face was black, I'd turned into a nigger, when I looked down my hands were still white.
- Dreams are a biologic necessity
- I made a collection of dream phases, words that occur often between sleeping and waking, and you get peculiar grammar.
Burroughs talks about writing and art:
- Interviewer : What mechanisms should he work on? Burroughs: The words should/shouldn't should never arise, there is no such concept as should with art, unless you specify. (I really like this because that is my view on art in general, there is no wrong answer, even with a brief it is how you respond to it, and that's not wrong).
- My feeling about art is one very aspect of art is it makes people aware of what they know, and what they don't know they know.
Dinosaurs
I really like this I think its very humorous and something I would like to look further at as illustrations, especially this extract:
"Son, it's the end of the line. We are ugly, idiot, bellowing beasts. Some of us are sixty feet long with a brain the size of a walnut. Where can this end? In a natural history museum our bones gawked at by pimply adolescents--"Say, I wonder how big his prick was?"
---their turn
The idea of personifying the dinosaurs into having thoughts about humans and how we view them.
"And I say to you, if the only way I could survive was by mating with egg eating rats then I would choose not to survive. "
A thanksgiving prayer (the parts I liked most):
Thanks for the wild turkey and passenger pigeons destined to be shit out through wholesome American guts... Thanks to a nation where no one is allowed to mind their own business... You always were a headache and you always were a bore.
1914-1997 Aged 83.
Pen name William Lee.
Novelist, short story writer, essayist, painter and spoken word performer.
Poetry:
- Fear and the monkey
- Dead whistle stop already end
- Spain & 42 St
- Cold lost marbles
- My legs senor
Shakespeare
Plays:
- Hamlet
- Romeo & Juliet
- The Tempest
- Macbeth
- A Midsummer nights dream
- Othello
- Twelth Night
- King Lear
- Much Ado about nothing
- As you like it
- The taming of the shrew
- A writers tale
- Richard |||
- Julius Caesar
- Henry V
- Coriolanus
- All's well that ends well
- The Andronicus
- Measure for measure
Aprrox 1564-1616. Playwright, poet, actor. 38 plays, 154 Sonnets.
My favourite Sonnet - 18
"Shall I compare thee to a summers day?"
Poetry
- A lovers complaint
- Phoenix and the turtle
- Rape of Lucree
- Venus and Adonis
Most popular Sonnets:
- 126 O tron my lovely boy
- 130 My Mistress' eyes
- 029 When in disgrace with torture
- 116 Let me not to the marriage of true minds
- 18 Shall I compare thee to a summers day
My favourite play : Romeo and Juliet
My bounty is as boundless as the sea. My love as deep; the more I give to thee. The more I have, for both are infinite.
I dreamt a dream tonight
And so did I
And what was yours?
That dreams often lie
In bed asleep while they do dream things true
It seems she hangs upon the cheek of night like a rich jewel in an Ethiopean's ear
I then watched the film with my friends and later looked at the soundtrack. I realy like 'Kissing You' and this inspired me to write my own poem about losing a loved one; imaging how it would feel.
Who do I chose?
It seemed to me the easiest option from all of these would be to pick Shakespeare because I am already aware of his work as is everyone, read his plays, analysed them, watched the films, quote the quotes, and I could perhaps do a modern spin on this. However, William S. Burroughs has really intregued me, And although I really don't understand him most of the time, can't make out what he is saying in his interviews and audios, there is something about him and his writing that stands out for me. He pushes the boundaries which I like, hes ruthless with his words. He has been through a lot, mostly drugs, and these have affected his writing. I want to know more about him, he seems a character.
Things that aren't first apparent about him
- he used his first gun at the age of 8
- he was introduced to opium by his housekeeper
- later in life he thought he had been sexually abused by a family member
- he began experimenting with drugs at the age of 13
- at 16 he lost his virginity to a boy in the next bunk bed
- he destroyed all his diaries from this period
- he was known for keeping himself to himself, spending most of the time with his revolver and pet ferret
- he purposely cut off his baby finger at the age of 25 and gave it to a psychiatrist who admitted him to a mental hospital. He claimed it was part of initiation ceremony into the Crow Indian tribe, later writing a story about the experience 'The Finger.'
- in 1946 burroughs was arrested for forging narcotics prescriptions
- Burroughs had a wife who he moved to Texas with and grew marijuana
- in 1951 he killed Joan with a pistol after playing a game of William Tell
- The police ruled it an accident and he was never charged for the crime
- Though written in 1951 'Queer' wasn't published until 1985
- He sold his typewriter to buy heroin
- He was a pioneer for the gay liberation movement, however claimed 'He had never been gay a day in his life'
- He made paintings using bullets from shotguns
- He died of a heart attack. The last words in his journal were 'Love? What is it? Most natural painkiller there is. Love.'
Wrote in his 1985 foreword to 'Queer' -
"I am forced to the appalling conclusion that I would never have become a writer but for Joan's death; and to a realisation of the extent to which this event has motivated and formulated my writing."
'The meat of the text of Junky is as close Burroughs could get to a factual account of his own experience of heroin.'
In a letter to Allen Gillsberg: ' The book is the only accurate account I ever read of the real horror of junk. But i don't mean it as justification or deter ant or anything but an accurate account of what I experienced while I was on the junk.
The reason I think that Burroughs is so interesting is because he has took this dark part of his life and used it to create something quite wonderful. When you hear his voice narrating, it is a dark tone but something that is equally soothing and calm. The stories he tells are dark but have a hint of hope. For example 'A Junky's Christmas' is a dark tale of a junkie named Danny seeking his fix by stealing, desperate for a room to stay to get his hit. In the end Danny gets his room, but gives away his heroin to someone in great pain in the next bedroom. 'He put out his thin dirty hand and touched the boy's shoulder. I'm sorry kid, you wait I'll fix you up.' A selfless act in a time of physical desperation for drugs. Reminding us that drug addicts are not aliens, they are human beings who still have feelings though they may walk around at times like zombies.
I am most interested in drugs, the idea that something can make you lose complete control over yourself. It actually scares me, the thought of not being able to control myself, like a paralysis. Especially when there are people out there with disabilities and paralysis that would be desperate to have full control. People are using it for a fix, a high, and enjoy the idea. I have never touched any hard drugs - I don't judge anyone who does, or experiments, but personally I would hate the thought of my mind wandering elsewhere and not having control over my body.
Youtube : Jamie the Junky. A candid conversation with a Seattle Heroin addict
The last person to see Kurt Cobain alive. Delivered heroin to Cobain's mansion before his suicide.
Injects heroin into himself. Interviewer asks, "How do you feel Jamie?" "I feel great." "It's not a matter of intelligence. It's a matter of being in a situation where if I stop, I'm going to become ill and I can't afford to become ill right now."
Youtube: Ben - Diary of a Heroin Addict
"I hope after you watch this you don't think I'm self pitying because I KNOW I've done this to myself."
Ben Rodgers. Spent 14 years on heroin. Taking heroin 4 times a day, with veins so damaged he has to inject into his groins.
"Anyone who's fucking listening who fucking needs help, fucking reach out and grab it because it aint fucking easy mate. "
"Age of 12 magic mushrooms, speed, ketamin anything else up until you fucking hit the smack train at the age of 18."
"(Crying) I've been doing this fucker for 15 fucking years. "
It's interesting to see how the addicts use their darkness to publicise it and get a message out to help others in the same situation, even whilst they are still addicted. It's also interesting to know the backgrounds of the people that have took drugs. Comparing Ben to William Burroughs, completely different upbringings, ups and downs, normality and madness and yet they still turn to drugs.
How they keep secrets from everyone, a double lifestyle, an alter ego. "Ben kept the seriousness of his addiction a secret for as long as he could." Lying about why he needed to borrow money and what it was for.
Drug addicts as different creatures
Mumbling, dazed, cloudy eyed, on edge, constantly moving, restless, black teeth, stained, black lips, dark eyes, staring. Cut hands, cut lips, wrinkled skin.
Youtube : Heroin Overdose
One addict speaking about his friend Remi after he overdoses on heroin and struggles to find his tongue : "He says, take dope, but also take food. Don't just live on drugs. Like today, he made me eat half a loaf of bread. If I didn't eat he would never speak to me again." Showing how they still have a caring nature.
Adam Rosenberg : Spider. A day in the life of a heroin addict.
I like the idea of creating illustrations that show normal people turning into these dark creatures of the night in a state of paralysis losing control but still doing caring things for others; still HUMAN which is what interests me.
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