The shade of Stephen Dedalus sings to me from the screen. Sometimes I wish I smoked. It's a lot easier to be tired, world-weary and cynical with a cigarette spiralling blue in the corner of your vision. Truth is, I'm deep in the heart of deadline deadlock. Can't quite remember the last night of uninterrupted sleep. Reality sidesteps, tangoes with Harry Houdini, and suddenly the only thing left is the keyboard and the screen. Everything else is smoke and Swiss cheese.
It does take over, you know. No matter how prosaic the task of creation, still it calls your all to the fore. Artist's joy, artist's terror: while you are an artist, there is nothing else you can be. Not friend, nor husband, nor lover. Not neighbour, not enemy - nothing but a font. And one can but hope that the water is untainted.
So this is where I am. Trapped rabbitwise by the headlight white glare of the square eye. Outside, in the world my imagination paints there is a sun that shines, there are insects chirring in trees I have created especially for the day. There has been sweet rain, and the air is fresh. I have friends not far away, dancing in sharp wine and laughter.
If only everything remains when I have done.
listen — Dirk Flinthart, in the voice cast for this edition
Somedays turn so swift to yesterdays if you don't watch carefully, carefully. Hand in hand we watch brave deeds unfold before us, turning, turning in the gyre of quickstep 2/4 time. A step out of time and your place is lost, whirled away by another, swifter in the dance. Wait your turn. Never miss your mark.
listen — Dirk Flinthart, in the voice cast for this edition
It's those moments that things go into overdrive that I hate. The article has to be done yesterday. Nobody will develop slide film in time. The photographer can't make it. We'll change the location, and make it the California Cafe instead of the Breakfast Creek Hotel; the Creek's been done to death anyway, right. But what about the rewrites? And it looks like three of the nine chapters didn't make it through the e-mail gauntlet, but that's all right, because the printer in the publisher's office is down for the count, so you've got at least five days. To put in that extra 15000 words you really wanted to.
And don't forget to show up for the publicity shots on Friday, oh no - front steps of the Art Gallery, you and Birmingham. Trying to look cool in black in the heat and glare from the too-white angled concrete wasteland of the Museum complex, and meanwhile Natalie's on night duty, so no sleep by night, no sound by day, and I just remembered, only just now that on Friday I will be thirty-two years of age...
listen — Dirk Flinthart, in the voice cast for this edition
Red - better a moment of weakness that passes as the tears dry than days of the pain and effort it takes to conceal the sadness. Once you've wept, the tears are gone, but the struggle not to weep binds you for long, long...
listen — Dirk Flinthart, in the voice cast for this edition
Sometimes I can't remember who I'm supposed to be. Sometimes there's nobody around to remember for me. Forgetting is like letting go. It's like the comfort of the carousel, as the ever-familiar unfolds infinitely in front of you, becoming strange and new again with each turn of the wheel. Who am I tonight? Who will I be tonight? Who will give me a name?
Listen... I think I can hear them now.
listen — Dirk Flinthart, in the voice cast for this edition
I have been Irish. I know the sound of the uillean pipes and the hum and thump of the big Kerry bodhran. I know the warmth of stone walls and fires of stolen peat, the wag of tongues and the fireflash of the heart, quick to wrath and quicker to laugh. They say all my fights are merry and all my songs are said, but the dead are always the same when we carry them home. Near a thousand years, now still carrying the dead home, where they crowd the rafters, tittering and giggling in the smoky dark above the lanternlights.
How many dead? How many for Brian Boru? How many for King Billy? How many for Bloody Liza? How many for Black Cromwell? For Pearse and Collins and de Valera? For the Green, the Orange, for the North and the South, for our wars and for the wars of the world? How many for the year our crops turned black in the fields? How many?
And all over the world, the sound of pipes, and flutes and drums. And all over the world, we carry our dead with us, crowding the rafters, playing catch-as-catch can with our shadows, dancing through our stories and our songs until there's no more room for the living, only the endless procession of the dead...
listen — Dirk Flinthart, in the voice cast for this edition
When the hero Cuchulainn learned he would die in that final battle, he did not turn aside, but dressed himself in his finest wargear, and bade his charioteer Laeg to do likewise, and over the weeping of his women, went to war. Amongst the men of Maeve, who came as foes to the fief of Ulster, where the Hound held his home, there were the sons of the Wizard Calatin. Many were they, yet one. And they bore with them a bright-bladed spear, with weal to work.
When the wild warcries rose about them, the sons of the wizard Calatin gave the spear to a warrior, and spoke: "This spear shall slay a king," they said.
"Well it shall be," answered the warrior, and the spear was cast at Cuchulainn, the Hound of Ulster. But the spear did not hurt him, striking in his stead his great horse, the Grey of Emain. Hardforged steel struck true the steed's heart. Bright blood burst from his mouth, and the Grey of Emain died there on the field.
Then the warrior retrieved his spear and turned to the sons of the Wizard Calatin.
"Now you have slain the king of horses," said the Sons of the Wizard Calatin. "Cast again. You shall yet slay a king."
Once more the bright spear flew at the Hound of Ulster in his chariot, and again it turned aside from his battle fury, cleaving the chest of the charioteer Laeg.
And again, the warrior recovered the spear.
"Now you have killed the king of charioteers," spoke the Sons of the Wizard Calatin, "but cast again, and watch! You will slay a king indeed."
A third time the spear flew, and this final cast was more true than those before. It entered the belly of Cuchulainn, and it is written that all his entrails fell into the chariot at his feet, next to the body of his charioteer.
But the battle-fury was upon him, and Cuchulainn cared nothing for the wound. He took up the spear and cast it back, and the warrior who had first thrown it was driven into the earth by the force of the blow.
Even the Hound of Ulster must know his death wound, though, and even thus it was with Cuchulainn. Gathering his entrails into his body, he took up the body of the Grey of Emain, and his second horse, the Black of Macha drew the gore-stained chariot to a nearby lake.
There it was that Cuchulainn washed himself, and combed his fine, black hair. And when he was again clean as a warrior should rightly be, with a belt he bound his body to a stone that stood on the shore, and with sword in hand, waited the will of his foes.
They were not long in coming. The host of Maeve gathered around the body of the hero, but none amongst them dared come close. About his head the hero-light yet played, and though his wound gaped wide, his eyes were bright and the sword was steady in his hand.
Then at last, a crow landed upon the white shoulder of the Hound, and with courage no man yet knew, plucked an eye from its place in the head.
Surely the Hound of Ulster was dead.
listen — Dirk Flinthart, in the voice cast for this edition
I know where I'm going I know who'll go with me But the Devil only knows The one that I will marry Some say that he's black And some say that he's bonny But the fairest of them all Is my handsome, winsome Johnny...
listen — Dirk Flinthart, in the voice cast for this edition
And it's a long, slow, Sunday afternoon on the verandah of the pub. Underfoot, the wooden floor worn to a gloss of ages by countless scuffing boots. Slow, drawling speech and flies under the brim of the broad, battered hats while I and mine take a table to see the sea, faraway blue in the east. We are well and living comes easily, with the blood young in our veins and the good malt and amber beer cold as wickedness across the questing tongue. We sit in comfort as the breeze comes from the west with the breath of mountains on it. The talk is bright and laughter comes freely.
We plan the overthrow of the state, a movie starring Kiefer Sutherland and Michelle Shocked, the downfall of world capitalism and a comic novel about Elvis. Mountains move as easily as flowers before our grain-scented words. In the strength of youth and health and friendship, we fear not fire, nor foes, nor yet what lies before us.
But all as the sun walks west across the wide blue world, somehow I hear a distant drum and know the fear of flags.
listen — Dirk Flinthart, in the voice cast for this edition
Queens and Kings and strange idols, forgotten loves and lovers lost. What endless courage it takes to be reborn upon each new death. And who guards the paths? Who holds the roads for all the countless pilgrims? There are those that watch. There are those that care. And yet -
Quis custodiet ipsos custodies?
listen — Dirk Flinthart, in the voice cast for this edition
Once I saw a gorilla who had been taught to speak in words of the hand. Her sad, gentle face gave no hint of her heart, but she spoke of love, and lies, and her long strong fingers were swift as any human. Now they are bringing her a mate, and she will bear young. Will she teach them to talk? And if she does, how will we feel about all those gorillas we keep in cages?
listen — Dirk Flinthart, in the voice cast for this edition
In days of once-upon-a-time you were most terrible of all. Greyest of rogues, more evil than sorcerors; Mere devils dissolved to nothing at your touch. There were none so strong they might resist your grey-tongued onslaught. More fell than steel, the deadly drone of your dust-dry catechism, pitilessly reasoned genocide.
One by one, or in their numbers banished. Jack himself fell prey when you abolished all his giants, live and dead alike. And Arthur: hauled from unsuspecting glory in far Avalon. Excalibur could not cut your chains.
Whole worlds. Barsoom and Shangri-la Hy-Brasil and Lyonesse the Lost, and O: the towers of Tir na n'Ogth, the golden spires of Atlantis, spurned beneath your heel.
Careless of your conquests, you made no shift to save them, throwing dust across their shattered lovely bodies as you passed, relentless in your massacre of innocents.
One by one, or in their numbers gone forever: bright Dragons, brave tailors, wicked witches, talking beasts. Condemned all frogs everywhere never to become princes Unhorned the unicorn, drowned the mermaids, wrapped everything, cutting corners, edges neatly trimmed, in precise and mathematical shrouds.
And in your wake we picked amongst lathe and tinsel, cut glass and tin, thick-stringed puppets sagging on the tawdry stage. Clockworks, drunken whirring innards splayed. Springs unwinding: tick-tock, tick-tock tik-tok to stillness.
listen — Dirk Flinthart, in the voice cast for this edition
Sometimes I have found myself wondering at the colours and the skills and the images upon our greybrick walls by the steel river klickitiklick. Considering Pompeii. And if the hammer falls tomorrow drowns our world in fire and ash and if they come and dig us up again with brushes and picks and cameras and if they find our walls and not our books will it be these poets who are remembered to stand for us all?
listen — Dirk Flinthart, in the voice cast for this edition
Madriffing, sadriffing, badriffing dammitohell, I don't like being angry. It's the blood in the eyes, the tolling of a deep, deep bell behind my skull somewhere. Quiet tension. Bitter peace. The knowledge that unless I step carefully, unless I walk gently within this fragile skin, someone stands more than a chance of being hurt. Mayhem and madness; I know the owl's screech as my own. I know the taste of electricity. I know the secrets of knife-edge and needlepoint. I know the solidity of wildfire. It's a whole new me, dark and broad and heavy-footed. I keep him jekyll-and-hydden away, but he's down there, oh yes, down in the cellar where I can hear him breathing and feasting on rats and spiders and the scent of sweat. Never knock on his door. Never rattle his windows. Never shorten his sleep as you value your life.
I do not like being angry.
Nobody else likes it very much either.
listen — Dirk Flinthart, in the voice cast for this edition
Well I remember that still night. I was over, crushing a bad, pretty girl... misery seemed like a life of having what you can't want. Distracted, Something decided to go and find me, so an old friend of mind went to visit. Friends I didn't know were having him over, so I felt Somewhat - the Outsider. "What was wrong?" I asked when he saw me, and he said he felt lively about depression. He looked at me and said, "The life of a thing is wicked."
listen — Dirk Flinthart, in the voice cast for this edition