Quote

“Eternity is really long, especially near the end."

- Woody Allen.

The Manson Dance School!

Dwang

Dwang is the name of a forthcoming new anthology in which I have a poem alongside work by the likes of William Wantling, Tony O'Neill, Adelle Stripe, Fred Voss, Tim Wells, Geoff Hattersley and countless others. It's published by the rather excellent Tangerine Press, who are based down the road in South London and have an all-new website which I heartily recommend you check out here. Dwang will be out in June 2009 but can be pre-ordered now.

Six Word Reviews: Part II

We live in fast times. Our attention spans are short. I get sent lots of music. These three points will be addressed in Six Word Reviews.

Black Lips – ‘200MillionThousand’ (album)

Roky’s Erickson’s lysergically damaged children combust.

Goldie Lookin’ Chain – ‘ASBO4Life’ (album)

Old joke in a new tracksuit.

Screamers (DVD)

Serj Tankian confirms: “genocide = no fun.”

All-American Rejects – ‘When The World Comes Down’ (album)

This makes Fallout Boy sound appealing.

Glasvegas – ‘Flowers & Football Tops’ (single)

Buddy Holly lives, ya radge cunt.

Jeffrey Lewis & The Junkyard – ‘Em Are I?' (album)

Ritalin punk. What’s not to love?

'A writing frenzy'

I wrote a piece about Alfred Wainwright for The Guardian.

And I wrote a piece about Dischord Records, also for The Guardian, for their 'Label Of Love' series.

I feel that in writing pieces about folk music and mountains I am attempting to shatter whatever perceptions about me exist. Then I realise that no-one much cares either way. No such perceptions exist to be shattered.

I am 81.6% of the way through writing a new novel and am listening to Can again. (The album that everyone says is rubbish, but is actually pretty good.)

Spanish coverage and morris dancing

"English author Richard Brautigan mixture with Lester Bangs"

Let's dance.

'Author with bum-fluff moustache and official Danny Dyer mouse-mat (feat. Nick Love)'

A snip at £3.99, direct from "Britain's greatest living thespian" himself.

Six Word Reviews: Part 1

We live in fast times. Our attention spans are short. I get sent lots of music. These three points will be addressed in Six Word Reviews.

My Chemical Romance – ‘Desolation Row’ (single)

Slade meets Meatloaf. Bobby Dylan weeps.

Lil Wayne – ‘Prom Queen’ (single)

Drunk, HR mistakenly joins Linkin Park.

Storsveit Nix Noltes – ‘Royal Family – Divorce’ (album)

Insane Icelandic klezmer. Count me in.

Spinnerette – ‘Ghetto Love’ (radio track)

Brody Dalle delivers the ultimate Homme-age.

The King Blues – ‘Save the World Get the Girl’ (single)

Street-level punk with street smarts. Necessary.

U2 – ‘Get Your Boots’ (single)

Circumcise yourself blindfolded. It’s less painful.

"He took a whip and smacked their ugly faces."

I will never tire of watching this.
It is more punk rock than a
thousand million punk rock bands.

"Good, bad, indifferent."

Love Hotel City got its first review over at 3AM. I have no idea whether my story was "good, bad or indifferent." Either way it is about a European who kills his wife and child in Tokyo and certainly one of the "less funny" stories I've written since...well, ever.

The legendry Jimmy from my pals The Bobby McGees mailed to tell me they got their music on a Channel 4 advert, which is both perverse and gratifying.

I've also been watching The Buddha Of Suburbia and Our Friends In The North this week - two series that had a big influence on me in my teenage years. Why haven't there been any British dramas as good as this lately?

(Paris Hilton's British Best Friend doesn't count).

I'm reading 17 by Bill Drummond.

Word By Word, Page By Page

Apparently last week's Luxury Goods art exhibition was a big success, though probably not because of my piece Word By Word, Page By Page. Artists Luke Brennan and Lisa Cradduck kindly send me these pictures of my work. Below those is the description that accompanied it.


































Word By Word, Page By Page
By Ben Myers

How do you value something such as literature?

My debut novel The Book Of Fuck costs £10.95 to buy in all good book stores.

This price was decided not by the effort and time involved in the creative process, but by the printing and distribution costs. As author I had no say in the price of the book.

To counter this I am now offering ‘physical shares’ in the novel.

Simply remove a page of the novel and do with it what you will.

Out of the context of the novel as a whole, these individual pages will now hopefully turn into short stories or mini works of art in their own right.

Those wishing to make voluntary donations may do so in the recepticle provided.

'Love Hotel City' anthology - out now on Future Fiction

"Fiction is documentary when narcotic visions supplant reality in the next Asian megacities"

Out now on Future Fiction: Love Hotel City.

An anthology of writing featuring 12 stories from
some of the UK and Japan’s most subversive authors:

Stephen Barber
Richard Blandford
Paul Ewen
Steve Finbow
Michael Gardiner
Ken Hollings
Richard Marshall
Ben Myers
John-Ivan Palmer
Lee Rourke
Kenji Siratori
Steven Wells

One visionary editor: Andrew Stevens

Available to buy from Amazon now.

Maybe I'll Give Up Writing And Devote My Life To Posting This Man's Amazing Film Clips Instead

Some Sort of Glam Rock Nightmare

It Has Been A Good Week

It has been a good week. Primarily for the following reasons:

- interviewing Gallows for their new biography. Their new album Grey Britain will be amazing.

- interviewing a man who is growing a third ear on his arm.

- interviewing some body modification artists while they put skewers through their cheeks, had nails hammered into their tits and sewed their eyes shut. Nice people one and all.

- Adelle's Forbidden Classics erotica collection for Harper Perennial.

- meeting Chris Killen for the first time at the rather splendid Bookslam in Ladbroke Grove and it not being "too weird or awkward". And seeing Joe Dunthorne read too. He was pretty good. It seems not all literary gatherings are fist-chewingly cringeworthy after all. Buy Chris' book, The Bird Room.

- contributing to my first art show.

- Going to 'Royal' Tunbridge Wells because, in the name of Scott, "it was there" (NB - it was arguably the whitest, most upmarket, over-priced town I've been to in Britain. There were quite a few 'Disgusted's' there.)

- the forthcoming Love Hotel City anthology (edited by Andrew Stevens).

Paul O'Connell aka The Sound Of Drowning's new Richard Brautigan comic.

- this weblog about farming and art and travel in Britain.

- some nice food.

- Kent.

- Werner Herzog's face.

- It is snowing.

A little light music
200 Million Thousand by Black Lips
Royal Family - Divorce by Storseveit Nix Noltes (mad Icelandic gypsy nine-piece)
Roots & Collaborations - Nick Cave (free with Mojo)

New acquisitions / reads...
Solo Faces by James Salter
Child of God by Cormac McCarthy
Lavengro by George Borrow
Dreams Of My Father by Barack Obama (thanks kind lady from Canongate / Bookslam...)
Norewegian Wood by Haruki Murakami