DARTING: A Collective Story Map

Over a period of five weeks a collective of writers of the River Dart worked collaboratively on a web-based writing project about the River Dart and the history - fictional or otherwise - of Dartington Hall. A series of short texts were written separately, for zines, postcards and blog posts. These texts were then collected, found texts and images were added, and all were collated onto this Google Map:

http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&msa=0&msid=109811778856642161490.00046c5ac479d9ec8655d&ll=50.443513,-3.841095&spn=0.381311,1.234589&t=h&z=10

Buckfastleigh Never Struck Me as a Fast Paced Place

Dartington in South Devon on a great bend of the river Dart is situated not far from Totnes along the main road from Buckfastly. 

(http://www.information-britain.co.uk/county28/townguideDartington/)

Darting Stories Remix

Over the past few weeks first year Performance Writing Students at Dartington have generated a number of short texts for zines, postcards, and web maps, on themes including place, mapping, the River Dart, and the past occupants (fictional or otherwise) of Dartington Hall. Most of those texts are archived on the Darting Blog, and are presented as a collective story map on Google Maps: Darting Map

In the last session of our workshop we looked at remixing. In that spirit, over the past week I took sentences from the students' blog post and fed them into one of Nick Montfort's Python story generators. To download and run Nick's original 1k story generators in a terminal window, visit: http://grandtextauto.org/2008/11/30/three-1k-story-generators/ [I had used this same method earlier in the year to create Excerpts from the Chronicles of Pookie and JR]

For the purposes of this Darting Stories Remix I have shortened some of the sentences or selected excerpts from longer sentences to fit into the story generator format, and changed them all into the present tense and first person. Otherwise, these sentences are all written separately by separate authors to make collective stories.

To read Darting Stories, download this file to your desktop and unzip: Darting.py On a Mac or Linux system, you can run the story generator either by just double-clicking on it, or, if that doesn't work, but opening a terminal Window, typing "cd Desktop", and typing "python Darting.py". The generator runs on Windows, too, but you will probably need to install Python first: version 2.6. Once Python is installed you can double click on the file and it will automatically launch and run in the terminal window. Every time you press Return a new version of the story will appear.



Here are a few examples:

Darting Stories:
How do I write an epitaph about myself in the first person?.
Through the depths of the water I reflect far and wide.
Hadrian's Wall might have mostly come down, but it's there in spirit.
Mad, that's what they call me.
I crave little more than my freedom, my air, and my land.
I will walk directionless, till the unknown end.
Striving to connect with something natural.
To be continued...

Darting Stories:
At the start, I look for the lights.
What do names matter when worlds whirl together?.
I don't live in a house, where they could watch me.
I live along the Dart but not around the towns where they patrol.
I pass out in the dirt-floored cellar most nights.
Sunlight barely reaches the stone floor.
I am a fervent keeper of horses, ponies and barns.
Websta's brother died in the Dart. Had his throat slit.
The sea is a place I understand is rather nice.
Introvert, extravert, ingreen.
This the most achingly beautiful place to come across a little death.
To be continued...

Darting Stories:
Stories run off the Moor with it's river waters.
I stride up hill holding hands with a friend named for the greatest flower.
William, sweet or otherwise, has never been my name.
I scare their dogs by trying to speak with them in their own language.
Graceless truths of tears clutch at the mirage in my room.
The ponies look more listless and less majestic.
It gets so muddy here; no wonder all the cows around here are brown.
The wind gives the landscape something of a facial peel.
Splash water into mud, trip me.
Smouldering timber and melancholy permeate my lungs. I stick to the path.
This the most achingly beautiful place to come across a little death.
To be continued...

Darting Stories:
On this hill the world as we know it collided.
Intoxicating tongues speak of Giants, Merlins, Padfoots and Beasts.
Geoffrey of Monmouth's accounts are unfounded, possibly fabricated.
The clay on the wheel beneath my fingers, whirling a world on its axis.
William, sweet or otherwise, has never been my name.
I crave little more than my freedom, my air, and my land.
I don't live in a house, where they could watch me.
I live along the Dart but not around the towns where they patrol.
I will walk directionless, till the unknown end.
I am a fervent keeper of horses, ponies and barns.
To be continued...

Darting Stories:
Stories run off the Moor with it's river waters.
I will walk directionless, till the unknown end.
Fear and bliss live with me and the room contains me.
Websta's brother died in the Dart. Had his throat slit.
Black looms in the distance, the air thick with distaste.
The Waters of the Dart run across stones fallen from foreign clouds.
Map the most important places around the River Dart.
Exmoor, outmore, out the door, more doors.
More floor, less flaws, less cause, pour, pore, sweat, regret.
Skip over Kandinsky pavement, follow the water.
Flotsam on a tidal river is a strange mixture of oak leaves and seaweed.
To be continued...

(sorry it's a little late, finally managed to get onto a computer that likes the internet!)

David, the dog trainer.

Respect, he said
Take the lead and walk with them.
Share it. Just walk with them
and they’ll know what to do.

Correct them first, at home, he said.
Tell them what you want to do,
They’ll gladly follow you.
Just walk, they’ll follow you.

We’re all the same, he said.
Boys and girls and dogs, and the rest.
We all just want respect, he said.
Just walk, they’ll follow you.

My father taught me this, along with the dogs. I think it sums it all up, and I had something to live by.
Think of his words to remember me.

Could someone explain what the Stein remixing is all about please? I'll probably be on the computer during most of your lecture on wedensday. thankyou!

Darting Story Cartographer Zines at the Arnolfini in Bristol

First year Performance Writing students at Dartington have been working to create a collective story map of the area around Dartington. Their first assignment was to produce a single sheet cut and fold zine:

The map may be hand drawn, photocopied, scanned or downloaded; the map may be realistic, statistical, abstract and/or wildly inaccurate, so long as it refers to the real River Dart. The zine must have a title and must contain five complete sentences, each of which must refer to a specific point on the Dart. The zine may contain any number of images.

Zines produced in response to that first assignment were on display in the bookshop at the Arnolfini in Bristol Saturday, December 5, 2009, along with zines by J.R. Carpenter. For more information, visit the event listing on the Arnolfini webiste: Performance Writing: JR Carpenter

Images of the zines showcased in the Arnolfini Bookshop:

John T. Bones

The highly disliked bar-keep of the White Hart, from 1768 until his not-so-untimely death in 1774. He enjoyed drinking ale, fighting with punters, and raping the bar-maid. A most unpleasant fellow, he spent most hours of each day getting rip-roaring drunk before opening to the public in mid-afternoon. He made the air more malodorous than that of your usual 18th century watering hole, due to the fact that he was passed out in the dirt-floored cellar most nights. This was where he met his blood-soaked end, by a pewter tankard in the hands of his most unfortunate, violated barmaid, Marianna.

Stein Remixed

There is feeling. Circling feeling. Reddening feeling. Feeling is mounting, circling. Feeling without meaning, always. Recurrence of feeling. Recognition, but no resognation, and in the evening no resting. And always entirely mistaken. Always feeling. Always circling. Always feeling.

Final Assignment - Collective Map

For the final assignment, add your zine sentences, postcard stories (with postcard images) and epitaphs to this map:

http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF&msa=0&msid=109811778856642161490.00046c5ac479d9ec8655d

You may add more stories, if you have them. Add at least one short "found" paragraph that describes this place in a way you disagree with, or know to be untrue. Include source. One place to look: Totness/Dartington Site History http://www.devonperspectives.co.uk/index.html

Write a short blurb about the project to use in an email announcement of the project.

"If you move around all your life, you can't find where you come from on a map. All those places where you lived are just that: places. You don't come from any of them; you come from a series of events. And those are mapped in memory. Contingent, precarious events, without the counterpane of place to muffle the knowledge of how unlikely we are. Almost not born at every turn. Without a place, events slow-tumbling through time become your roots. Stories shading into one another. You come from a plane crash. From a war that brought your parents together."
Anne-Marie MacDonald, As The Crow Flies, Toronto: Knopf, 2003, page 36.

June - The girl

Beside church bricks, sheltered, the silence prevails...............Nothingness. I spent my days in one room, the ceiling so low that sunlight could barely reach the stone floor, and instead my cheeks grew aflame by the light of the blazing fire. Intense feeling, both fear and bliss lived within me and the room contained me. It is where I first saw my love, slightly blurred through the small kitchen window. Yet that environment, so hot, so busy, bred inside my lungs sickness and age. The room so hidden, became a dungeon and I stood in its depths searching for breath....I never saw that room again, I never again placed my feet its stone flooring or felt the powerful heat of the burning fire and I never again saw my love, slightly blurred through the small kitchen window.

Brief Stein Remix

Inside, feeling seeping from the ceiling, and through the curtains, and through all the curtains, in the evening, feeling is seeping, all the reddening curtains bleeding, the curtains bleeding, in the evening. And in the morning, there is pinching.

Stein remix

In the curtains, and the yellow bed linen, there is a reddening sand. Inside the evening steamers and outside the pinching standards there is resting resignation. All this has meaning. 

Stein's badass remix

Anything reddening, this makes curtains.

The circle is recurrence, recognition is resignation.

Evening standards is mistaken morning.

Resting bed is yellow outside.

Meaning is sleeping.

Feeling is the sand inside.

Stein Remix

You're entirely mistaken. I wish I was sleeping. The morning gives no feeling, and the evening's lost all meaning. I am feeling the recurrence, recognition of resignation. There are no curtains, and stop reminding me of bed. Outside, go that way a bit, walk in circles, the sand is red.

remixed

Inside there is a reddening, in the outside there is sand. In the morning there is evening, in the meaning there is feeling. In the evening there is feeling. In feeling anything is feeling in resting. Anything is feeling mounting in resting and feeling in resignation, in resignation there is feeling, feeling recurrence is feeling twice or more.

Stein Remix

in the inside there
in the outside there
in the morning there
in the evening there
In the evening there is feeling.
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaain feeling anything
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaain feeling
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaain feeling there
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaain feeling there is
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaain feeling there is recurrence and entirely mistaken
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaathere is pinching.

and all the standards have steamers
and all the curtains have
and all the yellow have
and all the circle have

This makes sand.

The colourboy

And the colourboy was broken. The heaviest of life's storms disfigured the horizon. Black loomed in the distance, the air thick with distaste. And up the hill he did stride holding hands with a friend whose name was that of the greatest flower. And beyond the tops of the trees he attempted practice with tuition, and suffered a change. Timeless he bonded visions, graceless truths of tears clutched at the mirage in his room. Pixelated sights danced to euphoric sounds. Dirty at Christmas the colourboy calmed and left for home but just before he did sultry wonder what miracle would tempt him from his devil. The colourboy watched grey sharpen its shade and the bruise of this tone absorbed him as he passed.

Gertrude Stein Remix Session

Original Gertrude Stein quotation:

"In the inside there is sleeping, in the outside there is reddening, in the morning there is meaning, in the evening there is feeling. In the evening there is feeling. In feeling anything is resting, in feeling, anything is mounting, in feeling there is resignation, in feeling there is recognition, in feeling there is recurrence and entirely mistaken there is pinching. All the standards have steamers and all the curtains have bed linen and all the yellow has discrimination and all the circle has circling. This makes sand."

Miller, Paul D., aka DJ Spooky That Subliminal Kid, Rhythm Science, Cambridge: MIT Press, 2004. CD Track 05: DJ Wally Zeta Reticulli mixed with Gertrude Stein If I Told Him: A Completed Portrait of Picasso

Gertrude Stein, "If I Told Him: A Completed Portrait of Picasso (1923)," in Picasso: The Complete Writings, Boston: Beacon Press, 1970

J. R. Carpenter YouTube Video - A Vocabulary of Thinking, typing an excerpt from Gertrude Stein, How to Write

"Writing may be made between the ear and the eye and the ear and the eye the eye will be well and the ear will be well."

Gertrude Stein, How To Write, 1931.

See also, Tributaries & Text-Fed Streams post: YouTube Poetry

Arrow Lola Rocket Bam Bam Balooba Kennedy

Here William, they called when they wanted me to heel, to guard, to thrush, to hunt. Sweet William, they called me when I sat pretty by the fire or curled at night at the foot of the bed, my body warm at their feet. More often than not I came when called, though William, sweet or otherwise, was never my name. Lola, the cook’s child, took me for walks along the river. Kennedy, the horseman, saved me bird hearts and other victuals. And Arrow! That’s what the wind called me, when I ran fast as a rocket. Arrow Lola Rocket Bam Bam Balooba Kennedy, that was my true name.

Ruari Thomas

My memories always seem to start with hills. The hills of home changed, and it was a fair enough replacement. I didn’t even know they had hills in England ‘till Ma moved us there. She kept the house, and it became my home. Before long, I kept the garden. It was always my home. There was no other way for a boy to occupy his time, while still keeping out of trouble. I craved little more than my freedom, my air, and my land, and I could borrow them all amongst the roses. Along with the girl in the window.

Thomas Lyndon

Dreams of becoming a professional singer (it was jazz I loved, though pop- if it was about the music and not the sex- would also have been fantastic) were swatted and binned pretty swiftly by my parents during adolescence. Later, when my bus was empty I would sing loudly to old classics and cry on the dashboard. I loved the sky, but I never saw it, only road. Lost weight from lack of food saving enough driver wages to see Kate Bush play at Southampton; because ‘Cloudbusting’ reminded me of dead Lily. But she didn’t play it.

Edward Castle

Yes, it was painful. But it had to be done. It was the only thing I could do. Gardening was my whole life. Without it there was nothing left for me. I couldn’t watch other people at work in my garden. I had spent my whole life making it look like this. I did, of course, have my favourite part of the garden, that’s where I wanted it to happen. You all know why now though, why I had to do it. How can you be a gardener without your hands? What a pointless existence that would be.

Nameless Mad Tramp

Mad, that’s what they called me.

Mad because I didn’t live in a house where they could watch me.

Mad because I drank river water instead of the fluoride-laced tap water they give you.

Mad because I lived along the Dart but never around the towns where they patrolled.

Mad because I scared their children when I tried to open their eyes.

Mad because I scared their dogs by trying to speak with them in their own language.

Mad because I scared their cars by opening the doors to check they weren’t bugged.

Mad because I scared their policemen by waving that knife so they couldn’t catch me.

Mad because I’d rather leap off that bridge than let them take me away for the experiments and brainwashing.

James Wells

Please do not weep as you remember me,
For my last moment was full of glee.
Whilst polishing the wooden door,
I found a crack through which I saw
A treasure so rare for a man of my class;
A flexible woman with a bare naked ass.
Excitement erupting, trousers on the floor,
And she kept on dancing showing me more.
My pace quickened, I was ready to blow,
But a pain in my chest had started to grow.
My juices flowed as I fell to the ground,
But during my death not once did I frown.

Moira Edie

This is how I die. The ghostscent of clay in my nostrils, lining the cracked fractal veins of my hands. Good hands. They spun earth from earth for decades. Working the clay on the wheel beneath my fingers, whirling a whole world on its axis. My two worlds coalesce like a Venn Diagram, two binocular lenses becoming the eye of a telescope. Superimposing heather over the earlier blueprint of corn fields. I was always happier in the company of green and silent things than of people. Now I have what I was always searching for. Death is sheer silence.

Kay, a Gardener

I died in the most beautiful place, it was almost worth it. I wasn’t old, but I was working hard, and it was cold, and there’s no one to blame for that. My name was Kay, a gardener, and if you can’t work in all weathers then that’s a job you lose, so I never said anything, however much the wind might scratch at my lungs. Besides you don’t know camaraderie until you’ve spent time working the Gardens with your team; never known rivalry until you’ve raced against the other teams to clear your section, maybe kicking over a few piles of leaves to slow them down.

Jose Dysfortuna

A loyal and diligent worker at the barn in Dartington Hall. Served under Henry Champernowne. Emigrated from Portugal in 1645, in search of prosperity and privilege. Duties and successes include breeding ponies, and horses; as well as maintaining the at times dilapidated barn. Despite his lack of command of the English language, he always endeavoured to understand his master’s orders, and always carried himself with a restrained sense of grandeur. Died after his favourite horse, Cecilia, kicked him in the mouth, and he choked on the teeth which had been dislodged after this occurrence. Rest in Peace, you noble peasant.

now is the time to act

On this hill the world as we know it collided. There were fridges flying over the countryside and dropping small packages of explosive cheese. Of course, the blenders had to respond. The first wave of hand blenders and the whisk militia were hit the hardest, almost losing 250,000 lives. The worst blow was to troop morale though. Blendy Blenderson got hit. Blown to smithereens. The blenders realised this is not going to be over any time soon. Poor blenders. This is going to be a long, hard, uphill struggle, and they have to win. No matter what. The blenders must survive. This is life or death now. This is the continuation of a species. This is mass extinction. Genocide.

The fridges need to protect their place in the kitchen. Those blenders have been creeping up on every surface. The steamers have already been wiped out by the bastards. Who knows who could be next. The mandolins? Surely not the mandolins. We fridges need to do something now before the blenders spread everywhere. We must stop them. Put them in their place!

NOW IS THE TIME TO ACT PEOPLE!

Third Assignment - Character Mapping

"Is the place any token of the author?"
"indicat auctorem locus?"

Ovid, EX PONTO, I. VII.

According to the Dartington.org website, the site on which Dartington Hall stands has been continuously occupied for well over a thousand years.

Create a fictional character (with a fictional name) who used to work at Dartington, in any capacity, in any of Dartington Hall's many past incarnations. Roman legionnaire forced to dig latrine? Dorothy and Leonard Elmhirst's butler (if they had one)? Write a short epitaph for this character (100 words, first person), and post it to the blog with the characters name as the post title. Write an even shorter 140 character epitaph for your character for Twitter, including your characters name in the Tweet. Write at least three more 140 character sentences about your character for Twitter, which include the character's name and refer directly to the character's relation to the place (Dartington Hall).

Also for next week, photograph or scan your postcards and add them to your postcard story blog posts. Link the sentence(s) in your story that came from another student's zine to the post containing those sentences - see my postcard story post as an example: I've Died And Gone To Devon

The fourth assignment will be to create a map in Google Maps, My Maps. You will need a Google account to do this. Sign up for one and familiarize yourself with Google Maps, My Maps for next class: http://maps.google.co.uk/


Reading:

• On Locative Narrative, Rita Raley (https://twitter.com/ritaraley)
• in absentia, J. R. Carpenter http://luckysoap.com/inabsentia
  

"Outside the window was like a map, except that it was in 3 dimensions and it was life-size because it was the thing it was a map of. And there were so many things it made my head hurt, so I closed my eyes, but then I opened them because it was like flying, but nearer to the ground, and I think flying is good. And then the country side started and there were fields and cows and horses and a bridge and a farm and more houses and lots of little roads with cars on them. And that made me think that there must be millions of miles of train track in the world and they all go past houses and roads and rivers and fields, and that made me think how many people must be in the world and they all have houses and roads to travel on and cars and pets and clothes and they all eat lunch and go to bed and have names and this mad my head hurt, too, so I closed my eyes again and did counting." Mark Haddon, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, NY: Vintage, 2003, pp 160-161.

Flower Child

She collects mussels from the shore and drinks jasmine tea by the sandbucketful, the flower wavering beneath her lips like a sea anemone. She was always a hoarder of flowers. In her student days, they filled her rickety room. Jam jars and jam jars, and behind them more, of musty rootwater. She picked wildflowers before there were laws against that sort of thing, holed up shy little vole, making her meticulous botanical studies. Now she only picks the flowers in her gardens. She leaves the wild orchids to the bees though. That the landscape could produce such tender flowers, blushing, freckled things.

By contrast, Dartington’s prettiness is cultivated. Totnes, though however unlikely, might have a claim to being the birthplace of British Civilisation. Ardnamurchan is where that Civilisation ends. Hadrian’s Wall might have mostly come down, but it’s there in spirit. The wind gives the landscape something of a facial peel. Trees bent as barbed wire, hillsides scoured away with pan-scrubbers. Used to be a military site, but the shell scars barely scratched the surface of the mountains’ wild silence. Her face is scrubbed blank too. Given a vigorous, rigorous clean with carbolic soap and heather every morning before she sits down behind the potters’ wheel. That’s what she learnt here. It doesn’t seem so long ago, perhaps because, aside from revolutionary spirit and length of hair, she has barely changed. Merely moved from a breeding ground to a retirement home for old hippies, and gradually grown into the landscape.

The march

Up and down we march for endless weeks of something. Windows we pass, lines of colourful array.. but we just march on penniless as we are, my arm through yours, your arm through mine. Under that arch we go. You wearing that hideous brown coat, the one I hate so much. You used to drape it over me when I was young and felt sick on Saturday afternoons. I would lay still on the sofa, hideous under that itchy monster. To me it still smells of sickness.. I think it ridiculous and my arm itches terribly, placed through yours against its terrbile surface.

Parade of shops we skip past, the brown drapery sweeping around your ankles. You laugh and I realise I haven't told you how beautiful you are lately.. We watch the street in the ever changing colours of day and are the sole witnesses of the yellow colour of the arch turning to gold at dusk.

To my vision that street and your arm are the world. I cannot see your old skin or tired eyes, just like I cannot see the old buildings the bright lights are housed in. All is bright and alive and the hill presents no challenges to our new limbs or perfect breath. We march on endlessly, looking ridiculous.. You old in a shaggy coat, me young in a T-shirt with the goose-bumps rising up from my frozen arms.

not where I want to be

It's raining here. It's horrible. As soon as I got here I hated it. It's just so cold and wet. This is starting to get boring here. I had a terrible journey getting here, the coach got stuck in traffic then they emptied my bags at check-in just to piss me off. The plane was delayed and then I lost my wallet in my hand luggage. After six entire searches of my bags I found it in my pocket. Uncle John did pick me up when I finally landed here. Only problem he picked me up the day after I landed. In the wait I practically dislocated my spine lying across three terminal seats in an attempt to get some rest. Once we got all of my bags in the car Uncle John insisted he give me a tour of his new four-wheeled transport, much to my displeasure. We got here after what seemed like a tour of the entire low-countries of the western hemisphere. I cant wait to go home. I've gone mad and I've only been here two days. Don't feel bad for sending me here, I know you thought it would be for the best. After all how long can a year last?

The Hills Have Thighs

I was sitting in a pub by myself, morosely drinking a pint of stagnant local ale. This man approaches me, vigorously rubbing his face. He says that happiness is not far; that tranquillity can be attained atop a heap of rocks on the horizon. He takes me outside and points to a hill called Bell Tor. He forces me up the hill, until we reach the halfway point. He tells me that I must be alone, to banish the sorrow within myself. Until then I hadn't thought in needed guidance, but the peak seemed to exude some evangelical promise. I traversed up, till I had almost reached the peak, then I saw the same man. I was sure he had walked off in the other direction, but something was altered in his appearance. He looked less groomed, and more savage. He had his throat slit. I noticed a pile of dismembered hikers and tourists behind him. He lunged at me, so thoughtlessly I pushed him over. His head bounced off the rocks, while his body rolled lifelessly behind. He landed in a thick patch of heather. Before seeing if he had disappeared, I ran down the hill and back to the pub. I saw the man again, and asked him what he was doing up there. He said that was just his brother. He then asked me if I gave him what he wanted. I looked down at my hands to see all my fingers missing. "That'll do" he said cheerily.

Sticks & Stones & The Cornish Junta Militia

“It’s never struck me before now how alike a fallen tree is to a beached whale.”

“So you said,” He said, on one leg. “Please don’t sulk.”

The oak lay where it fell in the winds last autumn. They say. No one had taken it away. I reckon it knew what was coming and couldn’t stand the notion of our leaving. The other oaks that punctuated the meadows of the Dartington Estate were coming into full May glory, and this was the only time I’d ever see them as such. I sat on the walltop whilst He did pigeondances. Playing. We’d fucked in this field. Hopefully we would again. The evacuations to Falmouth were coming. The civilian bombings had been impolite. It was a shame they were hitting the villages; it’s easier to motivate people towards rebuilding a St. Paul’s than a Post Office. And once the Cornish Junta Militia had stolen the gate house cottage – bundled away on a lorry – we knew they were serious, that we’d better take heed. Last night The Great Hall was levelled, bar it’s stone doorway. The door’s gone. So now you’re always walking out. The whalebone beams reminded me of our tree. He kissed me. Nudged me. Playing.

“Please don’t sulk,” He said. We played Pooh Sticks until dark, which was when the lorry returned and dumped the cottage rubble further upstream on the Dart: They’d changed the river irreparably.

“Please don’t sulk,” He said, “They could have drained it."

Dodos

Once upon a time, there was an old witch and a matricidal quintet of Italian chefs who crawled up five million miles of gas piping and out of a drain, all the way from hell. This pleasant culinary flock had flown back to Earth to watch their growing grandchildren (and, more importantly, the second part of the Gordon Ramsey biopic trilogy). The old witch had no purpose.

“How dead and empty are the streets!” she said.

But, alas, in their panic, her comrades had dispersed forthwith and forgotten all about her.

“This is starting to get boring here!” she called.

Then suddenly, horribly, she became struck with the notion that no mortal would ever even recall, let alone appreciate, her contributions to this world. And so, with the intention of writing on the walls her name in their blood, she caught up with her associates and slashed their necks with a machete she kept in her left stocking.

Curses, she thought, ghosts can’t bleed.

In one final act of desperation, she snatched a piece of passing card bearing the letters ‘T-O-T-N-E-S’ and tried to carve her name in tears. Bugger and chagrin, she muttered. Only then did she remember she had forgotten her name and could not cry after all. In the end, she decided to bend one corner of the card.

And shortly after, a northern squad of Hell’s bureaucratic fuzz came and recaptured the escapees, torturing them on the way with nooses made of red tape. The end.

Lost in the Gardens

At the start I was looking for the light. It was nowhere. Just the branches, thick and heavy branches stretching out above and around me like a thousand rakish fingers dotted with leaves that contorted and knotted in their death throes as the autumn air suffocated and froze them. No light, well some light, the moon was above me but choked by clouds it’s light had dwindled until it was useless, just a sphere of cheese in orbit two-hundred and thirty-eight thousand miles above Dartington too dim to even illuminate the face of my watch. What time is it? Have to get through the Gardens, have to get to the Roundhouse. I’ve got a promise to keep and I’m not in the habit of letting people down, well okay, maybe I am but I do try to avoid it as best as I can.

My feet are wet, bloody canvas shoes. I’m kicking up flurries of leafy-mulch with every effortful stride. My straying from the pavement to find a shortcut has epically failed, this side-path is essentially a trail of exposed tree roots that no grass or weed can penetrate. I’m late already. Why aren’t the guiding lights of Lower Close and the Hall beaming through the scattering of trunks and bushes? This is hopeless. I won’t enjoy myself when I get there now anyway; knackered and wet and muddy. I’ll just apologetically get a round in a sit unenthusiastically at a table occupied by smiley, cheery laughing people. Bugger.

I've Died and Gone to Devon

England is a small country, unless you're driving across it. The three-hour drive from Heathrow to the West Country really takes four. From the M3/A303 you'd think the whole country was countryside. The deeper into Devon you drive, the narrower and more winding the roads. In North America, roads this narrow wouldn't even count as driveways. If this is the wrong side of the road, I don't care what's right. If this is the driveway, I thought, half a mile in, then I can’t wait to see the house. The house stands on a promontory in a bend in the River Dart. Meanders don’t last forever, but this house might. It's so quiet here at night. The slightest sound carries. A full moon whitewashes the hoot-owl-haunted high-tide river. At low tide stippled water runs over rucked sheets. Rain on magnolia leaves produces a dry, rustling sound. English optimism turns "mostly cloudy" into "sunny intervals". It rains sideways all day, until we decide to row down for a half at Ferry Boat Inn. A half moon rises over Dittisham. Fall flotsam on a tidal river is a strange mixture of oak leaves and seaweed. Cormorants line the bank, great wings hanging like laundry to dry. A pair of swans swans about near the slipway at Blackness. Don't laugh at the Caution Slipway May Be Slippery sign. It may be true. There are egrets, no regrets. This the most achingly beautiful place to come across a little death.

The Yachts of Salcombe Estuary

Look at the yachts, with their brightly coloured sails. And the seagulls! Let’s see how many we can count. There’s one, and another. I only see two, but I hear many more. See them soar towards the sea; their shrieks scratch at my bones. I sit with my toes in the sand, watching the sand spiders hurry away confusedly as I create mountains in front of them. The albatross sits atop its nest; screaming its hunger at the sea occasionally, awaiting its mate’s return for a chance to end its pangs. Over there is the rotting carcass of a rowing boat. Its ribs reach from the sand like they are desperate to feel warmth again, even if it’s only from the sun and not from a beating heart. Its spine is half-buried by the sand, sinking to paralysing depths. Its heartlessness aches familiarities, yet the anemones keep it company, clinging to its bones. The sun escapes from behind a cloud, its rays touching the outreached tendrils of the anemones. The children laugh on the beach, the smell of the fish and chips wafting down from the promenade, the tinkling tune drifting along the road from the ice-cream van.
Sand blasted daisies sway in the park, their yellow faces smiling at the sun as the sea breeze tickles their petals and the grass dances in rhythm. And I lay back, the children running around me, flicking sand at each other and screeching like the gulls overhead.

By Kate Rolison (as her Blogspot won't let her post, ahhh!)

She collects mussels from the shore and drinks jasmine tea by the sandbucketful, the flower wavering beneath her lips like a sea anemone. She was always a hoarder of flowers. In her student days, they filled her rickety room. Jam jars and jam jars, and behind them more, of musty rootwater. She picked wildflowers before there were laws against that sort of thing, holed up shy little vole, making her meticulous botanical studies. Now she only picks the flowers in her gardens. She leaves the wild orchids to the bees though. That the landscape could produce such tender flowers, blushing, freckled things.

By contrast, Dartington’s prettiness is cultivated. Totnes, though however unlikely, might have a claim to being the birthplace of British Civilisation. Ardnamurchan is where that Civilisation ends. Hadrian’s Wall might have mostly come down, but it’s there in spirit. The wind gives the landscape something of a facial peel. Trees bent as barbed wire, hillsides scoured away with pan-scrubbers. Used to be a military site, but the shell scars barely scratched the surface of the mountains’ wild silence. Her face is scrubbed blank too. Given a vigorous, rigorous clean with carbolic soap and heather every morning before she sits down behind the potters’ wheel. That’s what she learnt here. It doesn’t seem so long ago, perhaps because, aside from revolutionary spirit and length of hair, she has barely changed. Merely moved from a breeding ground to a retirement home for old hippies, and gradually grown into the landscape.

Dartmouth Castle

I don’t pay attention much, but I can see enough to see the lie of this postcard. Mostly what I see is rain spatters, droplets on glasses, and mist. Even the greenery is grey and faded. At low tide the stippled water runs over rucked sheets. If rucked sheets were river creased black stone; any metaphor will break down under scrutiny. Then the waves come rushing back, breathtaking, thought stopping, white, foam-like Neptune’s horses throwing themselves across the water and breaking their necks on the slimed stones. Spray soaks castle walls and wooden steps seemingly designed to send me slipping and staggering, and I forget the irony, oh the irony, of sunny postcard skies over calm postcard seas.

Choking on the Laughter of Ephemeral ponies

Around this time of year the ponies are particularly guarding over the moor's legacy, there is a sway in their steps as they meander down the ditch. A heady tang I will never forget, we watch the crumbs of our bread and cheese turn to stone as you ask; "Is the sky always this purple?"
And from the Hay I walk on the moon to the hounds that watch over this land. I stop to twist my alphabet into a letterbox, to leave an overdue recollection, and you rush off ahead to churn and mull over your escalating thoughts. We unite again ten minutes in the past, reminiscing five miles into the future whilst fumbling to grasp onto a slice of the present.
We stop to console the young girl at the crossroads; I rest against Bowerman and feel his blood moving. You quake on the featherbed as a thick rolling mist beckons us towards Princetown. Things take a turn for the worse as the prisoners of war pass through us. Then you find us walking over Two Bridges although we are unable to crawl over one.
Watching the granite dance on the Sabbath from atop a headless horse I catch the top hat you throw me, adorn my head as I sink into your inner monologue. Upon feeling the frost for the very first time I turn, and reply; "Yes it's usually purple at this time in the morning." You tell me it's been three hours, but I'm convinced it's been five days.

VO....YA....AGE

1. The concept of stillness, an idea of solitary scenes moulding themselves through the natural tides, with the humans weaving beneath.

2. There is a much greater freedom in the Dart, a willingness for people to contribute - it felt like i'd opened my mind out.

3. "I am no bird; and no net ensnares me; I am a free human being with an independent will".

4. The language of the river, the words of the people........tumbling.......tumbling........tumbling.

5. Me the poet, Me the reader, Me the self.

The Dull Cynic's Guide to the River Dart

Dartmoor
The River's waters start their flow at one of Britain's greatest natural beauties; Dartmoor... there's not a decent chippie or pub for miles and miles and miles.
The Clapper Bridges
A form of bridge of prehistoric origin made from slabs of granite that can still be found and traversed today, probably because the council can't be arsed to replace them.
Buckfastleigh
Soon after leaving moorland the Dart flows past Buckfast Abbey where the monks are known to practice beekeeping... as if anybody cares in the slightest about that.
Totnes
And after a whole load of nothing you get to this market town called Totnes. There's some right weird types there, full of the arty-farty lot... but some all right pubs.
Dartington
As if there aren't enough places with 'Dart' in the name and there's an art college nearby too... bloody hippie kids. P.S. The cider press isn't working AN OUTRAGE!
Dartmouth
And now we come to where the River surges out into the English channel, there is a castle but it's pretty small and not really worth the effort. (Also 'Dart' in the name AGAIN)

Second Assignment - Postcards From Here

"A big bundle of postcards. The curdled elastic around them breaks. I gather them together on the floor.
         Some people wrote with pale-blue ink, and some with brown, and some with black, but mostly blue. The stamps have been torn off many of them. Some are plain, or photographs, but some have lines of metallic crystals on them – how beautiful! – silver, gold, red, and green, or all four mixed together, crumbling off, sticking in the lines on my palms. All the cards like this I spread on the floor to study. The crystals outline the buildings on the cards in a way buildings never are outlined but should be – if there were a way of making the crystals stick. But probably not; they would fall to the ground, never to be seen again. Some cards, instead of lines around the buildings, have words written in their skies with the same stuff, crumbling, dazzling and crumbling, raining down a little on the people who sometimes stand about blow: pictures of Pentecost? What are the messages? I cannot tell, but they are falling on those specks of hands, on the hats, on the toes of their shoes, in their paths – wherever it is they are.
          Postcards come from another world, the world of the grandparents who send things, the world of sad brown perfumes, and morning. (The gray postcards of the village for sale in the village store are so unilluminating that they scarcely count. After all, one steps outside and immediately sees the same thing: the village, where we live, full-size, and in color.)"
          Elizabeth Bishop, "In the Village," The Collected Prose, FSG, page 255.

Assignment: Using a "found" postcard as a starting point, write a postcard story of a maximum of 250 words. You don't have to write the story on the postcard. The postcard must represent (or strongly resemble) a local place. The postcard story must refer to the image and place on the postcard, however tangentially, must tell us something about the place that the image does not, and must use one sentence from another student's zine.

For next week:

• post your postcard story to the blog
• include an image of the found postcard in the post
• tag the post with "postcards" and any other labels you think appropriate
  
• bring the postcard and a print copy of the story to class
• find and follow each other on Twitter
• rewrite your zine sentences as 140 character tweets
• READING: http://www.geist.com/opinion/geist%E2%80%99s-literary-precursors 
  

"Nothing is more occult than the way letters, under the auspices of unimaginable carriers, circulate through the weird mess of civil wars; but whenever, owing to that mess, there was some break in our correspondence, Tamara would act as if she ranked deliveries with ordinary natural phenomena such as the weather or tides, which human affairs could not affect, and she would accuse me of not answering her, when if fact I did nothing by write to her and think of her during those months - despite my many betrayals."
          Vladimir Nabokov, Speak, Memory

Tempest

Please don't sulk

Stop spitting at me as I walk alongside you

And you rush off ahead to churn and mull over your rapidly escalating thoughts

I know I haven't been looking at you lately like I did in the summer

But you know how it is

Sometimes it's raining and you just want to get the shopping home

And you don't help at all with your rages you know, you really don't

The thin filmy white bags carve into my palm and I could swear, could swear you splash a little more water into the mud, just to trip me up

Ok, ok I'm sorry, I owe you an apology; I've taken you for granted these past few months. I haven't told you how beautiful you are lately.

Home Map: for veiled, sleeping nomads

1. Wrap up warm, start journey with tight laces, walk, after 10 days turn left at the end of a wooden leaf-litter bridge harbouring a Persistence-of-Memory tree (BEWARE, if you scratch your initials on its branches your watch will burn a hole in your arm immediately).
2. Maple Mao-Tse tung, march uphill, past a steam boat floating a crowd of drunken, aristocratic Liliputins.
3. Walk plaintive meander to cotton woods to the Breton leaves (jot down his sleepy ideas Koreas careers sightseers (for your own rusty valve of inspiration).. checkmate cobble.
4. Skip over Kandinsky pavement, follow the water.
5. Tread a prison bridge and try not to get mud in your pockets.. meat the Eiffel Tower, turn left for front door.

La Riviere Dart

Two brothers, both so alike in their gait, meet to quarrel, but ultimately bond.

Where giant wood wheels spin, pulverise, and dry, and merchants sell their wares in days of old.

Among these majestic beasts of stone, I reside amongst humbler beings.

And this even greater creature, forged of necessity in later days, has fallen.

But here lay our founding father, the king of our nation, and namer of our town.

5 sentences and a title

Minimum four colours

nose blunt into the current, memory sediments

a single theory unites all narrow watercourses

at low tide stippled water runs over rucked sheets

emanations rise through slick mud

riverbed ram gut point floodflux

This is where I put the stick in.

That's the last i saw of them, i swear.

So we went to find somewhere better.

This is starting to get boring here.

It's getting too slow now.

Fish swam under the stick just there.

This is where it hit the rock and i thought it was all over.

Unknown River

At the start I was looking for the lights.
Through the depths of the water I reflect far and wide.
Waiting in my world for a guide to step outside.
Darkness is creeping through the city limits.
I will walk directionless, till the unkown end.

So With The Winds Behind Him...

"So with the wind behind him, he sought the promised land, and came ashore at Totnes." - Geoffrey of Monmouth.

Totnes, though however unlikely, might have a claim to being the birthplace of British Civilisation as the location of the landing of the Legendary Trojan, Brutus, along with his exhiled peoples.

Dartington Hall, and it's college of arts, has made the Dart my home as it was Brutus's, but soon my own exhile will come as this source of story is damned and is diverted to the draining Fal, spilling my words into the sea through a Mouth that is not mine.

The Source of the Dart is high on a moor that ancient tongues named after it; tongues that told tales of Giants who may never have lived there and tongues whose descendants now tell tales of Beasts and Big Cats and Padfoots.

The Waters of the Dart have ran across many stones, fallen from many foreign clouds, flowed through many other rivers; rivers that you know and one day will, rivers that your own story wil come across, cross & bridge, flowing with until the inevitability of the sea.

The Dart Valley Foot Path

I lived at Sharpham House for four weeks without a car before I figured out that I could walk into Totnes in under and Hour.

It gets so muddy along the Dart Valley Foot Path it's no wonder all the cows around here are brown.

The need for knee-high high-gloss violet classic Hunter wellingtons soon became overwhelming.

The painful space between the heart and the credit card is probably the soul.

Totnes is pronounced like Loch Ness, only the monster is silent.

The River Dart

"The river takes it's name from a Celtic word meaning 'river where the oak trees grow' due to the banks of the lower Dart being covered in ancient woods of native oak."
At the head of the estuary of The River Dart is the town of Totnes.
The River Dart is home to many different types of wildlife.
Many places along The River Dart are named after it: Dartmoor, Dartmouth, Dartington, Dartmeet.
The valley and surrounding area of The River Dart is a place of great natural beauty.

Stand By Me

Here's where we watched the meteor rain.

There's one, and another.

The stars a fleeing from the sky.

Or chasing each other over the cosmos.

Let's race them...

RIP Sam Merrington

Websta's brother died in the Dart.
Had his throat slit.
Thrown off Brutus Bridge.
Found by the Police.
Bandaged with a Body-Bag.

A map of places I should have been but mostly haven't (A map of the River Dart and Environs)

This is a map of the most important places around the River Dart. New Lane and Sandy Lane are the names of places at home, so they count.
Meanders, bends in the river, don't last forever. When there is a flood and the river cuts across the meander my house will be underwater.
Totnes is rather nice, or so I am given to understand. Mostly it's just a long way to walk, and I don't go there.
The sea is another place I understand is rather nice, another place which is a long way to walk.

My Five Sentences

Smouldering timber and melancholy pemeate my lungs as I stick to the path.
I savour the slight taste of Southern comfort, but my being yearns for more.
Beside the water's edge my fingers puncture the river's skin, striving to connect with something natural.
He condems me in a momentary look, uncontainable sterile tears; I crave to caress the dirt.
This the most achingly beautiful place to come across a little death.

First Assignment - A Dart River Zine

Using the single sheet/single cut and fold method shown in class, create a zine that, when unfolded represents a map of the River Dart near Dartington.

The map may be hand drawn, photocopied, scanned or downloaded; the map may be realistic,  statistical, abstract and/or wildly inaccurate, so long as it refers to the real River Dart.  The zine must have a title and must contain five complete sentences, each of which must refer to a specific point on the Dart. The zine may contain any number of images.

For next class:

• bring 20 folded photocopies of your zine to class.
• post your zine title and five sentences - in the order they appear in the zine - to the Darting Blog.
• create Twitter and Gmail accounts. 
• read: first two Darting blog posts
  
• read: The Landscape of Ancient Rome: http://www.brynmawr.edu/library/exhibits/antiquity/use4.htm
  

In the Beginning there was the Mini-Book

Why start a performance writing module on electronic literature with a zine project, you may wonder? Long stories come in small packages.

I grew up on a farm in rural Nova Scotia, Canada. Every story I set out to tell starts off that way.

When I was about six years old I had a subscription to a popular Canadian children's magazine called Owl.  In one issue, they had a page you cut out, cut up and collated into a mini-book about birds.  In 32 pint-sized panels The Owl Mini-Book of Birds introduced twenty-seven orders of birds beginning with the most primitive, flightless birds, and ending with the most advanced, perching birds.  I’ve moved house at least 12 times since, but somehow that wee book never got lost in the shuffle.  I still have it.



In high school I painted horrible abstracts in acrylics on canvas board, wrote excruciating poetry and studied classical guitar.  I could sight-read music, but am completely tone deaf so a career in music was out.  It was a toss-up between writing and visual arts until, when I was fifteen going on sixteen, I spent a summer in New York studying life drawing and anatomy at the Art Student’s League.  I decided to apply to art school.

I moved to Montreal to attend Concordia University. For four years I worked at the Concordia Fine Arts Library.  There I became simultaneously addicted to the disordered stacks of the now defunct Norris Library and the Fine Arts Slide Library photocopy machine.  I used the hell out of that photocopy machine.  I carried obscure anatomy books out the library by the armload, photocopied all the diagrams and returned the books unread.  There were complaints.  I almost got fired a number of times.  For more on my tawdry affair with the photocopier, read: A Little Talk About Reproduction. 

This was in the early nineties, before personal computers came along and made themselves accessible.  The drawing classes at Concordia were not quite on par with those at the Art Students’ League of New York.  I took an excellent collage class with David Moore.  There were photos I didn’t want to cut up.  So I photocopied them.  There were books I didn’t want to cut up, with anatomical diagrams in them more beautiful than anything I could draw, and there were also diagrams for all my other favourite things: botany, embroidery, analytical geometry, you name it.  So I photocopied them, called them "found drawings" and found uses for them.



The first mini-book I made as an adult bore the slightly adult title, Bound For Pleasure.  It was based on a poem of the same name and was illustrated with an erratum of diagrams ranging from a garter belt to a bandaged foot.  The poems got better over time.  The collection of found drawings grew.  In art school I made four mini-books: Bound for Pleasure, The Confrontation, The Probability of Mummification, and The Basement Family Pharmacy.  They’re no longer in print.  Mostly I gave them all away.



In 1993 I discovered the Internet, got a Unix shell account and set out to learn everything there was to know about computers.  By 1994 I was no longer working at the Slide Library and thus no longer had illicit access to an after-hours photocopy machine.  In 1995 I did a 10-week thematic residency at the Banff Centre, which was call the Banff Centre for the Arts back then.

The theme of the residency was: Telling Stories, Telling Tales.  The first story I told them was that I was a writer, which, as far as I knew, I was not, but they let me in anyway.  At Banff I attempted to make a number of mid-sized mini-books using the computer, but they never went anywhere.  I made this one book based on a circular story.  Because it was a book, when people got to the end they just stopped, because that’s what you’re supposed to do with a book.  Then the guy in the next studio over pointed out that if I made it into a web page I could link the last page to the first page so the reader could keep going around and around.  So I did.  My first ever electronic literature project was designed for Netscape 1.1 and it still works: Fishes & Flying Things.

I didn’t even think about making another mini-book for years.  Too busy paying off my student loan.  Luckily web art led to a few marketable skills.  I’ve since worked in every aspect of the Internet industry, as artist, designer, programmer, teacher, consultant, and even, once, a three-year stint as the manager of a multi-national web development team.     

After three years in the corporate world I never wanted to look at the web again.  So I began writing a novel.  About eight months in, I realized how long it would take.  Needing to finish something immediately in order to sustain my sanity, all of a sudden I found myself making a mini-book.  Not surprisingly, that book, Down the Garden Path was all about how incredibly long it takes to "make a thing which then exists and maybe it is beautiful."

Once the post-corporate traumatic stress disorder has worn off, I began making electronic literature again.  My first novel  came out in the fall of 2008. It remediates texts from four previously "published" mini-books.  Three of the most recent mini-books are based on web projects: Entre Ville, The Cape, and How I Loved the Broken Things of Rome.  The web is nice, but nothing beats cutting stuff up with scissors.

I distribute these and other mini-books in person at readings and other events, through various ongoing postal zine exchanges, at Expozine, an alternative press fair held in Montreal every year, and through the DISTROBOTO, a network of cigarette machines repuropsed to sell cigarette-packaged-sized art for $2 at various cafes, libraries and music venues around Montreal.

Or just ask me next time you see me – there are usually some zines in my purse.
. . . . .