010: NOW WE ARE TEN

ENDLESS SUMMER

Good morning from Yeovil, South Somerset, twinned with The Great Red Spot of Jupiter.

Since this issue-episode’s theme appears to be End Of Summer / Endless Summer, it seems only right to mention that the Great Red Spot is actually a massive anticyclonic storm that’s been raging for centuries, though recent research suggests it is probably different from the so-called Permanent Spot that was observed up until around 1713. Why it’s called the Permanent Spot when it presumably no longer exists is anyone’s guess. If you’re able to flag down a passing astronomer to ask them or if you have one conveniently chained up in yr attic, please lemme know the answer. Donato Creti’s 1711 painting, Jupiter, was the first to depict Jupiter as having a red coloured spot.

Jupiter also has a smaller storm Spot, officially designated “Oval BA”, but it’s also known as - wait for it! - the Little Red Spot, and was created by the collision / fusion of three smaller White Spot storms. Now I could happily waffle on about Space Stuff all day… but after we talked about Everything Shops back in issue-episode #006 I feel obliged to issue you with an urgent warning about the existence of Fake Everything Shops, such as this example I stumbled on in Perranporth:

How welcoming it appears from the outside: a portal leading to an endless non-Euclidean maze of whitewashed, brick-walled Kings Chamber-like rooms stuffed with cheap primo tat. But you’d be wrong.

There are, of course, some clues to be found in this image - and I’ll offer a much sought-after No-Poop Prize to any beady seagull-eyed reader who can identify five red flags in this pic. I meant that metaphorically, of course - I don’t want you spending hours looking for five actual physical red flags in it, though if it makes you happy playing FLAGSEARCH during yr lunch hour then, please, be my guest.

If you were to enter through yon dismal archway, then you would be greeted by a single rectangular space reclaimed from what was once, presumably, a middlin’ sized Edwardian Revival style lavatory now filled with C-division surfwear and naff outdoors brands rather than a urinal. ( I almost accidentally typed ‘surfware’ then, and now I’m wondering what Surfware might be and how to shoehorn it into a short story). But fret ye not, dear reader. It’s an easy mistake to make if you’re still new to the mysterious and baffling world of Everything Shops. Just be careful out there! Some of these Fake Everything Shops are like dimensional lobster traps - once inside, you can never get out! You’ll find yrself stuck within dull, mushroom coloured walls, alone with a stern, unsmiling, middle-aged woman in a smock dress sat behind the counter listening to Vanessa Feltz on LBC who has the look of someone who is about to accuse you of shoplifting, despite there being nothing there worth nicking. The shop assistant, I meant, not Vanessa Feltz, but now that I think of it…

And your only way out is to buy something you really don’t want: a packet of chocolate raisins branded as ‘Cornish Sheep Poo’ or an antique packet of pickled onion crisps made by a snack company that doesn’t actually exist. But you’ve spent all your spare change on the parking and their card-machine won’t accept Diners Club. Her eyes narrow. The panic bubbles up inside you as you realise that you’re trapped! The racks of baggy tie-dye dresses and armless bottle-green old man fleeces that look like they escaped from an episode of Captain Scarlet start to close in on you. The room spins - or perhaps it’s you that’s spinning. You sweat and shake, your heart starts pounding in your throat. And before you know it you’re gibbering and shrieking insanely like the protagonist of an H P Lovecraft story as the remainder of your reason (and your holiday money) starts to slip away. “W-Why,” you choke, “D-Did I… come in here…?”

But the only answer is the sound of your own screaming.

No, my friend, you would have been better off going to the Red Lion Bazaar in Okehampton, Devon, which doesn’t look that promising on the surface, but ticked a fair few Everything Shop boxes for me under its white faux-brick facade. I like how their slogan “Something for Everyone” even teases the word Everything subliminally. Can you hear the Red Lion Bazaar calling out to you on some psilent retail psychic-frequency? “Come inside…come inside…” Heed its siren call! They have garden rakes and kids fishing nets…

Okehampton (or Ochementone, as it was known in the 1000s) also, as I found out by accident, has a really decent comic-book and vinyl shop called Strange Froot. I can’t seem to find it on the internet to link to it, but the woman running it was really nice and they had some cool Silver Age stock upstairs. It’s in the lovely Victorian arcade on Fore Street if you’re ever in the area or if you’ve just escaped from Dartmoor Prison like we did. One word of warning about Okehampton: it’s a cool little town, but we dropped in on a Monday and most of the cafes were shut that day, so if you visit on a Monday take a thermos with you or be prepared to lap water from the River Okement using your bare hands. We opted for Morrisons cafe, laughing as the prison warders and their baying bloodhounds lost our scent and were left scratching their heads in the car-park outside. The warders, not the dogs.

Summer may be gone now and the nights are rapidly closing in as we drift deeper into the Mellow Season, but carry the last of the sunshine with you in your thoughts and your heart.

Keep surfin’ the sinewaves!

Yer pal, Kek

I’m Kek-w. I write comic books, films, TV and books. The HUMANE DEBRIS newsletterzine is an attempt to build a tribe of like-minded weirdos outside of the imploding, necrotic, billionaire-owned, gated real estate of social media. If you know anyone else who might wanna join our fun lil gang, please aim ‘em at the subscribe page here: https://humane-debris-ed6dfb.beehiiv.com/subscribe.

But no problem if this ain’t yr bag, there’s a unsubscribe button at the bottom of the elevator shaft. Thx for dippin’ yr toe in the water. Appreciated.

JOHN M BURNS / NIGHTMARE NEW YORK

Well, I guess the big news - (more like old news, actually, since I’ve been so slow in getting this edition of HUMANE DEBRIS out the door) - is that Nightmare New York, the final published work by legendary British illustrator, John M Burns, has started running in 2000AD.

John had health issues in recent years and told me it was taking him longer to turn round episodes, but he asked me to create a brand new series for him to illustrate with the caveat that he’d probably be quite slow. Obviously, I was delighted to collaborate once again with someone I consider to be one of the greatest British artists, comic-books or otherwise - and one of my own personal favourites. If John had his way he would never have any science fiction or fantasy elements in his work whatsoever, but seeing as this was intended for 2000AD, I’m not sure we could have got that past Editorial. As it was, I toned down the fantastical visual elements in these opening episodes and ramped up the historical settings to give John something he might enjoy getting his teeth into. I had an awful, nagging feeling it might be his last full series (he was in his 80s), though I prayed that wouldn’t be the case. I had hoped John and I might be able to do a short non-SF strip together one day for a different publisher, but it was not to be. After a handful of episodes John rang me to say he was retiring from professional work because of his health. It was one of the saddest, most moving phone-calls I’ve ever had. I had a huge lump in my throat. John’s exquisite line-work and his gorgeous painted art have been a staple throughout the arc of my life. I read stories and strips illustrated by JMB in British nursery comics in my early childhood. John was an artistic colossus. An amazing man. I don’t really have the words to do him or his work the full justice they deserve. He passed late last year, as most of you know, and I still miss him immensely.

Seeing these pages finally in print is a bittersweet experience for me, to put it mildly. I hope you enjoy seeing them and celebrate, with me, the life and work of one of the UK’s artistic titans.

WRITING COMICS WITH KEK

This time round we’re going to carry on digging into some of the ‘softer’ skills you might need in order to survive as not just a writer, but in other creative endeavours - making art, music, whatever. This is the stuff they probably don’t talk much about in podcasts, substacks, ‘Script-Writing for Dummies 101’ type books, etc. The only person I’ve ever seen delve into the philosophical aspects of creative labour, sustainability, inspiration, etc is the great Werner Herzog in assorted Q&As and masterclasses. There’s a wealth of great WH material on YouTube; I recommend you go check it out - maybe it might resonate with you as much as it did with me. He certainly doesn’t pander to any illusions: “this is shit is hard,” often seems to be his core message - though thankfully he doesn’t propagate that tiresome Tortured Artist Stereotype - that you have to really, really suffer to make great art (though, looking back over his career, it was certainly never easy for him); instead, he exudes warmth, wry humour and passion when talking about his chosen path in life. Herzog is a survivor - a persistent presence -as well as a master craftsman, so it’s really worth listening to what he has to say about getting stuff done. Charlie Kaufman, as well as being both endlessly entertaining and a source of intellectual inspiration, is a wellspring of thoughtful insight if you’re hunting for resources on creative integrity, ‘truthfulness’, authenticity of feeling, ethics, etc. I just mention these as asides; we’ll be coming in quite a bit lower than that level, but hopefully there will be some useful and practical tips here for those of you who are just starting out or are still in the early phases of your artistic journey.

1. Start Small. This is always the first piece of advice that I give to anyone asking for tips on how to get started. It’s a cliche, but true: a lot of people jump straight into writing a full-blown book or a 90 page graphic novel or a screenplay for a full-length feature film. My advice?

   Don’t.

   Of course, it’s great to have ambition and verve, and I’d be the last person to pee on anyone’s dreams, but, as someone who’s been there himself, lemme tell ya, pal: it’s the slow Greyhound Bus to Failuresville, Idaho. A road paved with good intentions and hard-drives full of abandoned manuscripts. Start off by writing something that has a fighting chance of getting finished: a short story, a 3-page comic-book script, a five minute film. And when you’ve finished that one, go do another. If you are fixated on writing the Great American / European / Asian / Antarctic Novel and, like Margaret Thatcher or the Titanic, won’t be turned, then break it down into smaller, manageable chunks: write an outline thumb-nailing each chapter in micro-detail or draw some other sort of similar road map, at least, and if that doesn’t completely ruin yr appetite, then try writing a chapter. Then another.

   Buuuuuut: Mid-Project Slump and burn-out are very real things, even for neurotypical peeps (it’s even worse if yr ND and have to arm-wrestle yr own synapses as well as wrangling a cast of wayward characters and a plot that you can’t keep track of). Not to mention the perpetual, cystitis-like burning desire to rewrite your book’s earlier sections “‘cos I could definitely do it better now, yes I could’. When you get stuck on that particular treadmill it’s hard one to get off (see: the following section on Perfectionism). Also: not to completely demoralise you, but the odds of a first-time novelist getting their book picked up by a traditional publisher are somewhere up there with a Volkswagen Camper Van spontaneously inverting itself. BTW, this isn’t to put you off of chasing your dreams - far from it - it’s just a heads-up about some of the obstacles you might not have thought about and will almost certainly face if you start off by Going Big.

   That’s not to say it wouldn’t be good practice - “everything is a rehearsal for something else” - you’d certainly learn a lot from the process. But, equally, some of you may just give up and walk away, never to return: “Man, this is just too hard…” And that’s what we’re trying to avoid here. Along the way you will hit the rocks and ‘fail’ multiple times - believe me, it comes with the territory - but what we’re trying to do here is build some resilience and sustainability in yr creative praxis. Crash-landing on the runway before you’ve even had a chance to get airborne ain’t what we’re aiming for.

   So, Start Small. And, by small, I mean something manageable within the context and limits of your own personal, physical, mental and emotional resources. Something that has a better chance of getting done without leaving you frazzled or sat, head in hands, listening to Leonard Cohen’s Greatest Hits. A novella has a better chance of getting completed than a novel. A short story is easier than a novella, flash fiction quicker than a short. A one-page comic is more likely to get done than an 8-part series. There is no ‘fail’ in Going Small: smaller forms (of literature, music, art, etc) are all subject to their own peculiar structures, problems and disciplines (and we’ll talk about that some other day), so you’ll still be learning, practising, gaining experience, honing yr skills - it’s not a cop-out. They’re just more potentially achievable, there are less points of failure and it’s theoretically easier to find a home for your (smaller, more manageable) masterpiece in an anthology, e-magazine or website, right? Finishing things is very important: whenever you finish something, you get a lil squirt of dopamine from yr CNS (that’s Central Nervous System, not Crosby, Nash & Stills) that’ll make you want to go and do the next thing and finish that too. Just like I’m finally going to finish this paragraph.

2. Perfectionism. See: above. Perfectionism - endlessly reworking your art, worrying at it like a terrier at the trouser-cuffs of his dead owner - is fine if you’re a trust-fund kid dilettante who doesn’t have to worry about paying the rent. But you and I live in the real world, right? Perfectionism is yet another obstacle to you completing that piece of work and moving forward in yr craft. There may be personal / psychological / neurological reasons why you are a perfectionist. Some of these might be hardwired and difficult / impossible to overcome, others might just be mired in habit, in how you view yrself as a person, your self-worth, etc. In which case, it might be worth exploring this and finding ways around. You’re amazing and more than enough, don’t ever think otherwise. Just do the best you can, in that moment, on that day. It’s enough.

   By all means, be ambitious, let yr imagination take flight, enjoy the intoxicating taste of your own words (or paint - phleurgh!), but try not to get bogged down in endless edits and rewrites, especially when yr first starting out. You’ll just end up chasing yr tail and get burned out / bummed out. Obviously, don’t be a lazy hack if you can help it - first draft isn’t always the best, despite what some pundits claim - but, equally, don’t labour over every word if you don’t need to. If yr goal isn’t to pen some arcane, experimental screed or write James Joyce fanfic, but to one day become a pro and make what we laughingly call a ‘living’ out of all this, then you’ll find that working to (sometimes tight) deadlines will remove that luxury and that editors will sometimes rewrite yr purple, hard-fought prose. So, Start Small and grow yr pieces into something bigger.

   Damn. This section ended up quite a bit longer than I originally meant. But, no, I ain’t gonna edit it - and ya can’t make me, neither, so there! (Actually, I already did).

3.  Habituation. Try to make a habit of your writing or creative practice - make it a regular, even daily, activity, but only if work / family life / health etc allow. If you can’t, then it’s not a fail. There’s only one of you and you can only do so much. Sadly, capitalism has ‘trained’ us to think that we must be constantly productive, otherwise we have failed in some way and that we’re sub-standard. Resist that line of thinking - it’s ableist corporate bs. We do what we’re able, when we’re able. It’s enough. No, the point I’m trying to make here is this: if you are able to integrate your creative practice into your life in some way - make it part of your regular routine - then it becomes a more natural, organic thing. It’s a way of fostering growth and sustainability, fluidity and ease. It becomes something you really want to do, less of a drag or chore. This morning, I woke up and really wanted to write the next part of this piece. That doesn’t always happen, of course - I’m only human too - but the more regular you practice yr practice, the more yr brain and body swing in behind you to help get things done.

4. Warming up / clarity practices. Some of you may have heard of ‘Morning Pages’: a daily writing habit where you pour a stream-of-consciousness onto one or more blank sheets of paper (or an Open Office page or whatever works for you). Adherents say it’s a good way of bringing intention, focus and clarity to your mind before you start your ‘real’ writing activity - it clears out the neural static and the negative crap. The Critical Inner Voice. This is one possible route toward the process of habituation / routine we touched on in the previous section. The artistic equivalent might be drawing random ‘warm-up’ sketches; the musical one, playing scales or mindful / mindless improvisation. It’s all about clearing the mind, opening yrself up to creative possibilities, grounding yrself. Journaling is another option - though I confess I sometimes struggle to figure out the difference between Journaling and Morning Pages, as some pundits seem to use the terms interchangeably. In my view, possibly wrong, MP feels more specifically like a writing focus tool (though it probably also has some mental health benefits, as does Journaling). It’s something I tried for a while many years ago, but drifted away from as the demands on my time and energy grew. You might find it useful, but if it’s just something else you don’t have time to do, then don’t sweat it.

I was going to talk about the knotty topic of Dealing With Rejection this time round, but I’ve already chewed up a fair bit of real estate and it’s a fairly substantive (and heavy) topic in its own right, so let’s come back to that one very soon. I hope this has been of help to some of you - some of the topics were a little heavy as they deal with the psychology of creative practices and the potential pitfalls of certain approaches, but I think it’s worth talking about these issues and showing possible routes round them. If this has helped anyone to get ‘unstuck’ or to find a fresh strategy to Get Started then it was worth it. My final piece of advice today: Keep going - but at your own speed. Good luck! 

KID SHIRT’S CRATE DIGS

First pull out the crate isn’t an album or a piece of music. THE DEPARTMENT OF MIDNIGHT calls itself an Audio Drama Podcast, but I’m going to call it what I think it is: a Radio Mystery Series. I grew up in the tail-end of the Radio Era: things like Dick Barton: Special Agent and creepy-voiced actor, Valentine Dyall, were still on the radio and I devoured them alongside the Neo-Modernist Gerry Anderson series, early Dr. Who, and old Universal and not-so-old Hammer and AIP films on our antique black and white telly. British TV was strange back in those days, but radio was even stranger. The BBC Home Service felt as dark, mysterious and otherworldly to me as a child as it was cosy, comforting and parochial. Voices from the dark. A playground for the imagination. Writer-Producer, Warren Ellis, has tapped into that odd, slightly mannered, post-war era of British Sci-Fi, TV and mystery theatre (Think: Quatermass, the BBC’s 1954 version of Nineteen Eighty-Four, A for Andromeda, etc, etc) to create a thoroughly modern reimagining of that micro-genre. Warren being Warren, someone who likes to chase bleeding-edge ideas and who loves to play with archaic story forms, has chosen Dark Matter as the series antagonist, because why the Hell not? There are call-backs to even older, ur-horror-mystery templates: protagonist, Dr. John Carnack = a Quantum Information Era analogue of Hope-Hodgeson’s Carnacki the Ghost-Finder, and there are locked-room mysteries (Poe), a Stone Tape adjacent Haunted House episode, a Denis Wheatley / Satanic episode, an interrogation episode (Kafka / Orwell). So, yeah, it’s a Radio Mystery Series for the coming Quantum Guignol Age - as modern as it is arcane and archaic: the bastard son of Ellis, Shalvy and Bellaire’s excellent INJECTION comic series - and I’ll tell you what else it is: bloody great! Actor, James Callis, is superb as Carnack (the whole cast is excellent) and the sound design is (sorry!) out of this world. And I love the theme tune. October is the spookiest month, so make this your Spooktober Listen - you will not be disappointed.

All six episodes of THE DEPARTMENT OF MIDNIGHT are available here: https://www.departmentofmidnight.com/ I’ve been listening to it on Youtube so that I can crash out in the living room or listen on headphones in the dark on my ancient, barely functioning tablet, but at the bottom of the DoM page there are links to all your favourite podcasting platforms.

And, moving on, what better way to strettttccch out the Endless Summer metaphor-theme than by alerting you to the fact that Sunburned Hand of the Man have a new album out, ‘Sizzle’ (see, you’re feeling summery already!):

…in which Ron Schneiderman & the gang bid a fond farewell to their loyal, much-loved tour van by recording in it before it’s traded in or junked. Sunburned Hand of the Man: if you know, then you know. Great cover by John Maloney!

And meanwhile in The Vinyls, this week I have mostly been listening to… Tom Zé. As Summer fades into the realm of memory, you can’t beat a bit of Brazilian Tropicália to perk you up and put a glide in yr stride. I don’t care if it’s pitch black outside and its raining burning skulls and your home is surrounded by scythe-wielding, pumpkin-headed scarecrowmen, tracks like “Hein? or “Augusta, Angélica, E Consolação” will immediately make you feel bright and breezy as you shimmy into the kitchen in search of a Piña Colada, a brightly-coloured beach ball and a raspberry mivvy. Damn them supernatural entities outside, I’m puttin’ up my big yellow umbrella and catchin’ some imaginary rays! Tom Zé is pure liquid sunshine, musical vitamin D. Scored my copy of Brazil Classics 4: The Best Of Tom Zé second-hand a little while back from my pal, Paul, at the Beat n Track in Sherborne, Dorset. (It’s worth it for Tom’s sleeve notes alone: “Rhythm is God dehydrated.”) Tell him - Paul, that is, not Tom - that I sent you when you Bossa Nova yr way into his shop with a fruit salad balanced on yr head.

READERS LETTERS

Some more letters and communiques from HUMANE DEBRIS’ wonderfully potty readership. Dammit, I love you guys! Thanks for making contact.

First up, my old pal, Rich, who texted in response to my reporting of the Yeovil Dunelm and Bus Station Pyromancy Incidents: “Kek, slightly concerned that you seem to be at the site of so many fires. Pyro? Don’t worry, your secret’s safe with me! When I get back I will find you some help.” To which he adds, ominously: “I could bring some diesel.”

I asked Mark aka Meemo where people could get hold of of his BLANK SIGNPOST fanzine and he pointed me at his Insta, here: @blanksignpost DM to get a copy. Mark also plays in Leeds-based lo-f Noise group, The Tea Towels. We talked a bit about occult-anarchist pigeon mail networks and the “post-xerox aesthetic”, and writing this has reminded me that I owe him a letter.

And guitarist / improviser / all-round good bloke, Cyrus Pireh, mailed in response to my tips on writing / creative practice in issue-episode #009, saying, “I am with you 100% on keeping the habit going and always having a notebook to write fleeting ideas down in. Being like water is another thing I think on the daily.

"Two additional thoughts I often think on this subject come from John Cage. Maybe I picked them up from Silence or from a biography I read. In any case, the first is him talking about how his best ideas came from when he didn't know what he was doing. When he knew what he was doing, he felt the ideas were not as good. He says this in conjunction with talking about how when he had the least time for music (time was taken up with day jobs, stress, other responsibilities) that he had his best ideas and when he had lots of time for music, the ideas were not as good. All to say, it helps me deal with the "if I only didn't have x responsibility, I would be in a better situation to make more music / projects, etc" thought that creeps in.

“The second was his talking about making music that was like weather. Which I took to mean ever-present, universal, and a part of everyday life. When music/art is a part of everyday life, it's a part of every day in my life.”

Amen, brother!

CHILL WITH KIKI

As we slide deeper into Autumn’s dark nights, keep dreamin’ those sunny dreams!