A Journalist Wanting Words

In my career I have interviewed Oscar winners and 15-minute pop stars, political heavyweights and hip comedians. Down the wire and in smoke-choked bars, I have filled notebooks with scratchy field recordings. From heroes like Bill Hicks to Serbian warlord villains, I have asked questions, stolen quotes.

More than 20 years of interrogating have given me good technique. I research. I charm. Give me 30 minutes and a couple of drinks and I will always get more than the usual tired procession of recycled anecdotes.

However, I am not used to being the interviewee. Hundreds of hours of professional questioning make it feel uncomfortable when it is time for role reversal. Being grilled on the BBC One O’ Clock News holds none of the terror of meeting an unknown journalist for beers and a personal probing.

Beyond contractual obligations, I do not turn down today’s interview because all that experience means there is too much empathy for a journalist wanting words. Given our career trajectories, Matt and I run deep with respect for regional media, the hard slog of provincial press. Having been there and dealt with too many no-listers with egos the size of planets makes you want to be better.

Come lunch, I stop work. Take a break from writing tomorrow’s speech, walk along the canal to my primary local. Buy a strawberry beer, sit in the pub’s library corner and wait on the journo. The strangeness of speaking to inland Oz via a meeting a hundred yards from my home is not lost on me.

The editor of You Magazine is funny and clever, good at what she does. Almost instantly she has me talking about curries with Matt, the black humour of newsrooms and invocating the Cosmic Joker. Both of us ruminate on God’s penchant for fatal punchlines. She offers up the comforting thought that by writing 1001 Ridiculous Ways To Die, instead of dying in some absurd accident, I have probably guaranteed a death 50 years in the future: “Grandchildren around the hospice bed.”

Bonding over Underbelly leads to questions on canalside life and the Lady Love. They do not get dodged. I bore on the spatial shock and casual splendour of Australia. Drift from stories of my lifelong llama curse to views on religious hubris and the evil of hippos. We discuss the interconnectedness of all action, the loneliness of solo authoring and what Matt and I might write next. The paranoiac bible gets a big thumbs up. I just hope when it gets written up, she uses my words on mayfly days and eating the extra chocolate biscuit.

One of the marks of a good interview is it feels like this one – conversation, not interrogation. At the end of it, I come out respecting and liking my questioner. I am even sufficiently charmed to agree to being photographed on the blue bridge. With my narrowboat neighbours behind me, I look into the massive lens and surprise myself with a smile.

The Centre of my Universe

The gravity of the Three Bridge Kingdom is impacting on my blood. Separating the settler from the gallowglass. One pools in my feet, the other runs only in my brain. The knowledge that there will come a day when I leave already projects a rupture in my heart.

As the attraction of place becomes stronger, it seems as if it is also warping the trajectories of others I love. Capturing them, creating orbits around the centre of my universe. Coalescing friends into an accessible solar system, ordered by the musica universalis of squabbling geese and boats gently rolling on the water.

The fact that my co-author’s partner lives canalside means the weekends he visits, my home feels like the terrace abode of The Beatles from Help. This week Tim Dedopulos moved from sleeping on my sofa to being a near neighbour with his own resident card. The gravitation even pulls in visitors from Verwood and Hadleigh who have been distanced for years. I can almost believe that one Sunday morning I will walk out for the papers and encounter my errant Canadian brother on the towpath.

These are harsh times and I need my mojo back. The echo of it at Worth Matravers made me realise just what I was missing. If I am to find it, maybe I should look closer to home. The sustaining magic of life is in the small wonder of friends and the soul-kissed love of my little patch of London.

Atomic Sun Smile

I think I have more than fulfilled any contractual obligations to mention 1001 Ridiculous Ways To Die on English Dreaming, English Rain. Unless something startling happens when we begin to publicise it in Australia, this will be its last mention in the blog. Before it is officially retired as a topic, there is the matter of saying thank you.

Before I print the acknowledgements as they appear in the book, there a few extra people to thank. Firstly there is my editor, Roland, for gig itself. Then there are The Dove and Jeff Edmundson, who provided both writing soundtracks and the sustaining support of friendship. Most of all, there is Matt Adams. The book is truly a joint work and co-authoring with him made the whole writing process a lot less lonely and massively more fun than usual.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

David would like to thank:

Surreal Girl, who despite the five broken ribs, falls down stairs and death threats is always there to hold my hand and make the world a better place with an atomic sun smile and a cup of tea; Tim, Stephen and Sean – brothers by other mothers; and Dickon, the only man I know likely to die a more ridiculous death than me.

The Power of The Sun

I have often secured coverage for those I represent in The Sun. Although rightly detested by anyone who remembers Wapping, Hillsborough or the days when they used to call gay members of the clergy ‘pulpit poofs’, it is still the largest English-language newspaper in the world. More than that, it is a place to run and win heart and mind lobbying campaigns. If you want to defeat some ridiculous piece of legislation, you use The Sun.

There is a case for saying that if left-wing campaign groups could put aside their prejudice and cannily construct stories which The Sun would feature, they could see some real successes. The complex dance of articulation between the title’s journalists and their audience is both pull and push. Be as snide as you want to be about the paper, but never underestimate its readership or its readers.

If upon landing in America I was ‘detained’ thanks to the little bit of trouble I got into with the CIA when writing Secrets & Lies, I would bloody well want The Sun campaigning for my release. Yes a lead in The Independent is nice when you are up shit creek, but the firepower of Murdoch is actually more useful. Especially when it is combined with The Sun galvanising an English mob to raise a fighting fund and ensuring pub conversations feature the line: ‘Those CIA are bastards, nabbing that writer just because he wrote about them sinking a ship in the Thames’.

Even though 1001 Ridiculous Ways To Die was always intended primarily as a book for Australia and Matt and I were not doing any publicity in Britain, The Sun decided to cover our publication. Under the headline: ‘Way to go!’ the story started:

‘Some people have had such bizarre deaths there’s a danger you could die laughing just reading about them.

A new book has rounded up hilarious true stories of people kicking the bucket in truly crazy fashion.

In 1001 Ridiculous Ways To Die by David Southwell and Matt Adams you’ll find tales such as …’

Before going on to use 15 entries from our book to make a feature.

The power of The Sun is such that from this single bit of coverage, suddenly Matt and I were suddenly appearing in papers across the globe. Our names echoing across titles in India, Thailand, Australia and the United States. There has been a nice bump in sales and the analytics for English Dreaming, English Rain are even more interesting than usual. Not exactly a case of ‘It’s The Sun Wot Won It’, but neither of us are complaining.

‘Frighted to Death by Faries’

To celebrate the publication of 1001 Ridiculous Ways To Die yesterday, below is an unedited draft of the final entry in the book, written by Matt, which is one of my favourites.

HISTORICAL HILARITY

Somehow it is reassuring to realise that ridiculous deaths are not restricted to the present day, as the discovery of an old parish burial register listing deaths from 1656-1663 in the parish of Lamplugh, Cumbria revealed.

Among the causes of death listed in it are such gems as the following: four people were ‘Frighted to death by faries’; another died after he was ‘Led into a horse pond by a will of the wisp’; 11 people died after catching a cold from ‘sleeping at Church’; two were done for by ‘Mrs Lamplugh’s cordial water’; a further two met their end ‘By the Parson’s bull’ and a couple of ‘Vagrant beggars’ were ‘worried’ to death by the Squire’s housedog; one man died after drunken duel ‘fought with frying pan and pitchforks’ while another life was claimed when, a man died in a fight ‘between a 3-footed stool and a brown jug’.

If nothing else, the register reminds us that death and the ridiculous have always been and always will be, a part of life.

Ancient Greece to Dubbo

I am probably contractually obliged to mention that I have a new book out today. It is my first humour book since the vile crime against trees I wrote with Anne-Marie Forker. Another co-authored affair, this time I had the pleasure of working with Matt Adams – a good writer, friend and man who shares my dubious taste in what is funny.

Called 1001 Ridiculous Ways To Die, it does exactly what it says on the cover. Written primarily for Harper-Collins in Australia, it records 1001 ridiculous deaths. From the 8th Century BCE to May 2008, ancient Greece to Dubbo, if someone has kicked the bucket in a bizarre way, they are probably in our book.

Released in the British Isles today, it is not due out in Australia till November 1st, when Matt and I will be doing the publicity rounds. An American version is due for release in January 2009.

A Tribal Affair

The new book is written and has been delivered to my commissioning editor. According to him: “It looks great.” My sigh of relief on hearing this was so deep I think the subsonic hum caused damage to the Westway’s concrete.

The good news keeps rolling with the discovery that the project is going to be copy-edited by Tim Dedopulos. This is a lovely bonus. Tim’s name was in the acknowledgements as one of my ‘brothers by other mothers’ long before I knew he would be working on the book.

Writing it with Matt Adams – whose name would have been in the acknowledgements of any project – then being edited by Tim makes it feel like a tribal affair. Sharing the spoils of a kill, turning one gig into work that helps keep three of us in the black. The running tribe model, the 21st century way,

The project is my first humour book in a decade. Unlike the crime against trees I put my name to help clear Anne-Marie Forker’s student debts, this one is almost readable. I am happy to admit it is a hack gig. When you need to pay for a funeral, there is no better way than to write a book about death. As Andy Warhol would say: “I’ve got to bring home the bacon, someone’s got to bring home the roast.”

However, doing this book has also meant being commissioned by someone I really rate and like, writing with one of the people I am closest to and being edited by a man who I consider a brother despite him having once stolen my name. It really does feel like the way forward. Working with my friends, dividing the score.

Now the book is over, there is only one more thing to do before I can get back to life. After I get back from the hospital I can concentrate on the important things. There are ducks to feed and brioche bread and butter puddings to make. A 99-year-old Nanna to spoil and lazing in bed with the Sunday morning papers to catch up on.

A Fragment from the Dreamscape

People often ask writers: ‘Where do you get you ideas from?’ It is a fair question, yet many authors sweat when answering. You can see guilty beads of moisture tracking the lines in their foreheads.

This is because most writers are thieves. We steal ideas. File down the ISBNs and respray or break them up for parts to be shipped out to distant lands. Illicitly obtained Peugeot 505 gearboxes go to Port Harcourt, plot devices go to Arthur Machen’s Baghdad of the mind.

In defence of my profession, it should be noted that poverty plays a part in most crime. According to Denis Johnston, there are only eight basic stories. With millions of writers around, that equates to a real shortage of resource and a breeding ground for criminality.

Some writers claim not to be thieves. They style themselves ‘literary DJs’. Remixing, sampling syntax and characters, pumping up the plot. Others claim to be scavengers, salvage merchants, saviours of stories that would otherwise be scrapped. Even when this narrative is self-consumed, it remains just a distracting lie. Every writer is a thief. Every one of us.

I could try to claim cleaner hands. Point out that I deal in non-fiction. No law against taking facts during empty afternoon raids on Kew. I even pay fair coin to my stranger sources. Vodka and tonic, a curry or provable gossip for sharing buried news. Tell me what is on the missing Diana tapes and I will tell you which of Philip’s bastards is scouting for a ghost writer to dish the dirt. Libertarian memories of the man behind Guido Fawkes for on the level fact about Charles Kennedy. Information brokerage. Legitimate exchange.

However, facts are not the same as ideas. The question remains: ‘Where do you get you ideas David?’ The answer is always the same, always honest. Dreams, talks and walks. There has been a shortage of curry conversations in July, so it has all been walks that drift unknowingly into Baghdad-on-the-Thames and dreams.

I do not know how it works for other writers, but for me the dreams that provide ideas come in two broad forms. In the first, I will find myself possessing the body of an alternate me in a parallel dimension. A place where I am guilty of fiction and published by Gollancz.

I twitch inside this other David Southwell. Make him switch on his computer to see the drafts of his latest project or else force him to pull his published books from the shelves. The Scarlet Faction by Tim Dedopulos and David Southwell; Before The Blood by Matt Adams and David Southwell; The Far Lands by Stephen Grasso and David Southwell; the collected Hellblazer comics. Half a Dozen Doctor Who novels written alongside Sean Twist. The Sherlock XIII series. In these dreams, I attempt to read as much as I can; I do as all authors do and steal. I could try to spin it, but taking my ideas from an alternate me is still literary theft.

In the second type of dream I take directly from the landscape and inhabitants of what Machen’s Baghdad. Map its streets; make surreptitious word sketches of faces I see dining in its restaurants. I sit alone in its bars, pilfering overheard conversations, recording them with my shorthand scratch.

Every dreamtime experience is mine for the taking. I can steal without fear of repercussion in this ideaspace, knowing that within hours I will be beyond reach of any law operating here. Safely over the Theta state line, safely across the border of sleep. If I ever manage a decent night’s sleep again, the Baghdad security force will nab me and I will be up upon a charge of grand larceny.

There will be those who do believe my answer as to where my ideas come from. They will assume it is my Verbal Klimt improvisation to excuse and justify my crimes, who think: ‘He is a writer, therefore a proven thief and liar’. There is little I can provide to counter such thoughts. I could try calling Alan Moore as an expert witness; cite his work on Machen as a record of case law. Then again, those who do not wish to believe ideas arrive fully formed from dreams are unlikely to be swayed by the testimony of a man who worships Glycon.

In terms of hard evidence, I doubt dream journals are classed as admissible. Regardless, here is a record of last night’s journey through the territory of the Oneiroi.

‘Albion at the margins of the 1348 apocalypse. Empty fields. Abandoned. After the abnormal, constant summer rains, everyone was expecting famine as the grain rotted on the stalk. Worse came when plague robbed the landscape of enough men to work it. Blighted vegetation, mutating under the cover of mist that will not yield to a watered down sun. Skeleton thin livestock left to fend from themselves stagger across the blistered and black earth.

It is a time of crows. Breakdown of social order. All law a hollow memory. Knights Hospitalier colonies fallen to ruin. No one to protect the crossroads. All maps mock the living. England now a country of abandoned ghost villages, the only inhabitants are the unburied dead that once inhabited them. Pilgrims and outbreak refugees alone on green lanes drained of all colour except the black and grey palette of road turned to mire. High death rate for abbeys and monasteries. Two thirds of all England’s clergy dead. Mass burials. Mud pregnant with corpses.

Rumours of infection and Judgment Day as rife as the plague itself. Doomsday cults and heresies infect all belief. Antisemitc riots, the plague seen as a Jewish conspiracy. Mass penitence processions drudging on across several days. There is so much death, even the Pope is forced to abandon any pretence of established doctrine, declares all plague victims saved. Seeking ways to assuage the wrath of God has become political imperative.

Hoodoo Crow Men try to arrange contracts with the old powers to keep their patch free of contagion. Village militias murder outsiders on the roads to keep any possibility of disease from passing through. Plague Doctors tour the country, peddling false hope. They all wear the same uniform of fear: a hat to denote their status as a doctor; a mask with crystal eyes and the spice-stuffed beak to purify the air; a wooden stick to push away victims who get too close; leather gloves; a waxed gown and full-length boots.

On the Border, Scots see the pestilence in England as a punishment of God on their enemies. They gather an army to strike while the English are defenceless. However, before they can march, plague hits their ranks. Pursued by English forces, the Scots flee north, spreading the plague deep into their homeland. First flood, then famine, plague and war. All horsemen free, Albion as a territory of hell.

An inquisitor for the local prince-bishop makes his way across the landscape. Moving towards an abbey suspected of heresy. Moving into the reach of Lord Carfax – the local embodiment of authority who is suspected of diabolism. Moving towards a church where a Doom mural is being painted. It shows people dancing with a crowned bear; a bridge of spikes; St. Michael wielding a flaming sword, leading an army of saints against a legion of living skeletons. The mural intended as both prophecy and protection from the plague.

The mural reflects the sense that the tide of life and light looks like it will be permanently out across all Europe. The sea of civilisation rolled back to reveal primal horrors; deep fears now free to surface and roam. The inquisitor is the protagonist, moving towards his role in a vampire story. All vampire fiction as a fear of plague, infection, contamination and contagion from the outside.’

This is a fragment from the dreamscape. A note scratched into the dreamtime Moleskine. I probably will never transmute it to fiction, never be published by Gollancz. However, I hope it at least helps clear up one third of the ‘Where do you get your ideas from?’ question.