Posted on by Rupert Loydell

Cartoon capers

Rollerball (1975)

The Warriors (1979)

Mad Max 2 (1981)

RUPERT LOYDELL reflects on political games and post-apocalyptic futures

These are some of the films I remember from my teens and start of my twenties. In my mind they were released closer together but searching for the release dates online today I can see that is not true. However far apart they were, they are linked together by a kind of stylised, cartoon-like violence that mostly avoided the horrific, and only occasionally made use of pathos.

I am not going to engage with the debate about whether violent films make us more violent and desensitize us, nor am I going to visit the argument about whether children know that cartoon violence is different from actual violence. If you want that kind of thing there are plenty of academic articles and books that engage with media and communications theory, psychology and critically dissect cinema tropes, motifs and individual films – not to mention lots of online unsubstantiated opinions and rants. Be my guest.

No, I want to think about why these three films have remained films which I frequently enjoy rewatching, despite (or possibly because of) the onscreen violence.

The first, Rollerball, imagines a world where everything has been bought. Everything is owned by giant corporations, everything is seen as a commodity, be that sex, property, audiences and, of course, sport. War (contrary to the actual capitalisation of wars) is not profitable; instead, there is a televised sport where each corporation’s teams play each other on a banked circuit, chasing a steel ball before capturing it and getting it into a kind of basket or hole at the top of the bank. Oh, and everyone is dressed like American Football players on roller skates, except for a couple of guys who ride motorbikes, which can also be used to tow the skaters.

Confused? It doesn’t matter. This film is actually about an individual (Jonathan E., played by James Caan) holding out against the state and/or big business. The game of Rollerball is a futuristic version (I say futuristic, but the film is set in 2018!) of the Roman gladiatorial circus, designed to distract and pacify the population; it is watched live by millions of people on TV and also in person. There are not meant to be standout individual players, and when Jonathan becomes recognised and idolised the corporations ask him to resign.

Jonathan, of course, refuses, so the corporations start changing the rules and the game becomes more and more deadly. Players no longer get injured, they get killed; motorbikes are used as weapons, and explode and burn; Jonathan’s friends and teammates mostly end up dead. Jonathan is not happy about this, but he will not run away. In the final game of the film, with all rules cancelled in favour of ‘anything goes’, he is the last man standing and slowly gathers his wounded self together to start skating a victory lap as the crowd chants his name.

It is not a subtle film, although for a while it was used in economics and political studies classes to show one possible outcome of neoliberalist capitalism and business monopolies. Beautifully stylised and choreographed, it makes use of a computer-style font specifically designed for the film on the players’ jerseys and films the games in an immersive way. Although there are scenes away from the game arena, carefully highlighting the teams’ camaraderie and also the wealth and degeneracy of corporation executives as they and their friends casually use fire guns to burn down trees, the film is about the game.

The game provides an endless background noise of roller skate wheels on wood, accompanied by the revving of motorbikes and the thunk of gloved fists on opposition bodies, but there is also a clever use of classical and background music, the latter composed by André Previn. Most of the time the music is accompaniment rather than featured, but the exception is the film’s use of Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D minor, which blasts out as introductory music and again during the closing credits.

Music is much more important in The Warriors, where a small Coney Island gang are trying to make it back home after an assassination of another gang leader, Cyrus, who was presiding over a huge gathering of all the New York gangs in the Bronx. Cyrus pointed out that there were far more gang members than policemen if they chose to work together, but is shot by the psychopathic Luther, who then points out The Warriors and says that they shot Luther. The summit and gangs’ truce are over, and The Warriors are at the wrong end of New York City.

I didn’t go to New York until 1980, so one of the great things about the film was seeing New York in all its grubby, run-down glory, just like the reality I would encounter a year on. New York City was bankrupt, dirty, violent and dangerous. It was also full of energy, music, art and attitude, 24 hours a day. It wasn’t, however, full of gangs in fancy dress, which The Warriors is.

It is the costumes and make up, along with the funky soundtrack and naturalistic filming, that makes The Warriors work. The film is episodic in nature, each episode containing a chase or fight or romantic encounter, each accompanied by an appropriate track, be that pumping synthesizer music for running, romantic pop for emotions, or Joe Walsh’s ‘In the City’ for the uplifting heroic credits where the remaining survivors of the gang’s long trek home walk into the distance along the beach. The film also makes good use of lyrics to reinforce the tension and offer narrative commentary, particularly with the songs ‘Nowhere to Run’ and ‘You’re Movin’ too Slow’. At times the music is played by a radio DJ who also keeps those gangs listening cryptically updated about The Warriors’ run for home.

The DJ has a sultry voice and red lips, which is pretty much all we see of her. She is a sexy presence throughout, as is Mercy (Deborah Van Valkenburgh) who following a street standoff defects from a rather pathetic gang, The Orphans, to join The Warriors. She has her eye on Swan (Michael Beck) and by the end there is clearly something going on.

It’s not a film about lurve though; it’s about male bonding, choreographed fighting skills and the constant arrival of yet another gang. The Warriors include a stupid macho tough guy, who gets caught by an undercover cop – a clever, observant kid – a couple of would-be leaders; and an amazing number of athletes and weapons specialists, be that swinging a baseball bat or manufacturing Molotov cocktails out of nothing.

The Warriors wear leather vests (waistcoats) with their gang colours on the back, but other gangs each have their own uniform: baseball outfits and face paint, top hats and white mime face with a red and black ensemble, denim dungarees and roller skates, silk jujitsu outfits, or leather jackets and caps. There’s also a skinhead gang who drive round in an old school bus, and a lesbian girl gang who try to seduce three of The Warriors who are oblivious to their seductresses’ sexuality.

Of course, in the end The Warriors make it home, only to find Luther and other members of The Rogues waiting for them. Swan suggests Luther and he fight one to one, but Luther is having none of it, so Swan throws a knife into his hand, then cuts a lock of Luther’s hair from him while he whines for forgiveness. He needs to do this as The Gramercy Riffs, the huge gang which Cyrus was leader of, have realised that The Warriors are innocent and have come looking for Luther, who is not a happy bunny. It is at this point The Warriors walk off into the sunset, Mercy and Swan hand in hand…

Nobody in Mad Max 2 (known as The Road Warrior in some territories) is very happy either. They all live in a post-apocalyptic desert world where fuel is scarce, vehicles are cannibalised for parts and clothing is a kind of D.I.Y. goth/sci-fi/biker hybrid. Mel Gibson plays Max, who is alone apart from his dog and a well-worn turbocharged cop car. Early on he observes a battle between a small walled town and a deranged gang of Hell’s Angels and soon ends up helping the town’s citizens escape to somewhere else with a tanker full of gas.

The escape is, of course, an excuse for an epic chase sequence, with exploding vehicles, impossible jumps between vehicles, shouting, shooting and stunts. There’s also a gyrocopter, sand storms, violent threats and sexual abuse, along with a feral kid and some far-fetched characters and cars. In the end Max remains standing in the desert whilst a voiceover informs viewers that the narrator “never saw the Road Warrior again”.

I remember my mate and I standing up at the end of this film to put on our leather jackets and pick up our motorbike helmets, only to have several hundred people in the audience stare at us, unable it seemed, to differentiate between reality and feature film.

Of course, having seen Mad Max 2, we decided to play catch-up and watch Mad Max (1979). This turned out to be a very different type of film, providing a grim back story to what would become a whole series of Mad Max capers. In the first film, Max is a highway patrolman, with a souped-up police car and several colleagues, who cruise the long, straight desert roads, trying to stop trouble brewing, particularly dealing with a biker gang who not only terrorise people but seem to cause semi-mystical apparitions of a crow.

It’s a clumsy device at best, but is indicative of the whole film, which has clearly not been completely thought through and has been filmed on the cheap. There are a few motorbikes, a couple of cop cars, lots of images of the Australian outback and not much else. Most of the violence, including the murder of Max’s wife and child, happens offscreen but it is still horrific, and the ending, where Max exacts his revenge on a biker, is even more horrific and nasty.

The film does, of course, explain why Max is like he is in Mad Max 2 but George Miller, who directed both films, clearly knew which side his bread was buttered on. However, instead of trusting the vehicular capers and dynamics of the sequel, he signed up Tina Turner for 1985’s Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome, dressed her in chain mail and put her in charge of Bartertown, a makeshift settlement run on methane from pigs, and policed by a bunch of bully boys.

Bartertown also has its own kind of gladiatorial arena, a weird dome where those fighting are strung up on elastic and have to bounce their way to any weapons provided and to their opponents. Max, of course, ends up in there (it might even be more than once, I can’t remember) and also manages to be mistaken by another community – this time young people and kids living around an oasis – as a mythical and possibly resurrected Captain Walker, the pilot who crashed the plane they were travelling on.

Miller not only drew on William Golding’s novel Lord of the Flies but also decided to steal speech, language and elements of the plot of Russell Hoban’s Riddley Walker wholesale, and to let Tina Turner sing the theme tune. Despite the film’s utopian ending, which sees the lost tribe from the oasis now safely ensconced in the ruins of a city, it seemed to be the final Mad Max film of a loose trilogy.

2015’s Mad Max: Fury Road proved that wrong, though. It reinvented the post-apocalyptic world Max lives in, replaced Mel Gibson with Tom Hardy, and was basically a long chase sequence followed by another one back to where the film started. I saw it at the cinema with my friend Pete (who had not seen any of the Mad Max movies) and remember him outside saying ‘What was that?’ Shellshocked wasn’t the word; gobsmacked probably was. Impressive vehicles, great make-up & costumes, spectacular explosions, a gaggle of female concubines rescued, a ridiculous and not-scary baddy, some weird but also funny acolytes, lots of gymnastics & pole-vaulting and some terrific action sequences and scenery. What more could anyone possibly want?

In the Los Angeles Review of Books, Isabel Ortiz said that “Mad Max: Fury Road does not look like an animated movie” but went on to add “And yet, despite the oozing corporeality of the film’s protagonists, many critics have commented on its resemblance to a cartoon.” In an argument that could apply to all three of my films, Ortiz states that

Fury Road is notable for transferring not only the rule-bound integrity of the cartoon genre onto fleshy heroes and heroines, but also the physics and bodily elasticity. Just as the animated body can stretch and recoil to absorb the impact of dizzying attacks, in Miller’s film human forms are endowed with the plasticity of cartoon characters.

Like Tom & Jerry, or other cartoon characters, these films are notable for their visual wit, pace and entertainment value, constant speed and dynamic, not to mention their impossibly indestructible heroes. And best of all, they are fun.

NOTES

• Avoid the appalling 2002 remake of Rollerball

• Details and a download of the Rollerball 1975 font, designed by Anthony Robinson, can be found here

• The Warriors Movie Site is online here. It includes news, deleted scenes, a list of all the gangs, location sites and more

• Isabel Ortiz’s ‘The Cartoon Bodies of “Mad Max: Fury Road”’ can be read in full here

Posted on by Rupert Loydell

Tuscan journal

RUPERT M. LOYDELL revisits a region of the past

(Monday). It is like coming home but not. New Fences, benches and fittings but same pink and orange dusk as the warm light disappears.

It is early in the season. So early that the pool is not ready for use and the grass is still rich green.

The effort to travel increases. What to select, what to leave behind, how to reassure myself that it will all be OK.

Family dynamics are weird, the ebb and flow of love and cynicism, rudeness and shared memories. We dip bread into oil for supper, with a glass of homemade wine. We should have asked for cheese.

(Tuesday)

At five o’clock it is cool but already bright. The windows are wide open and the air rushes in. Breakfast is late and makeshift: bread and oil again, melon slices, cups of tea.

We are going shopping at Hypercoop. It is not as fascinating or different as it once was but there is cheap wine and good olives, cheeses and bread. A big gluten-free section too.

•

Everything is now still. The sun overhead is not moving, shadows are crisp and defined. I try painting through the shutters but the stripes of colour do not work. In a moment I will hook the shutters back whilst everybody else is asleep.

•

Watching the sun go down. Blue, purple, grey. Flecks of orange, white. Trails of car lights across the valley. A dog barks, a bat flies by.

•

That feeling of being abroad but not doing anything. Apart from the hear and the view you might as well be at home. I am waiting to go out, waiting to see art, to eat different food.

The heat increases, the doors and windows are shut. The house goes dark. We are heading out.

(Wednesday)

In the Arezzo museum, weatherworn statues and paintings no longer required for worship are arranged in empty rooms, numbers that refer you to a notice board.

Awkward English versions, rough cut stone and carved folds. Decontextualized crucifixes and empty reliquaries.

Cold tiles, polished wooden doors, grids of light from ancient windows.

•

Rows of pillars, grey against cream. Badly lit paintings containing dwarves, rabbits, angels; the drowned and saved; Mary in her glory, Jesus as a child.

Pale memories of stories handed down as pictures, threatening lessons to be learned. Abuse of power. Hell awaits.

I cannot see. The varnish is gloss and cracked, the colours dark and chipped. Frescoes have been torn from walls and hung again in empty rooms.

Traffic and pedestrians pass by, we have the place to ourselves apart from the guard on her laptop and the old lady who knits. Both say hello, watch carefully as we look around the museum.

•

     worn paving stones

     courtyard striations

     layers of time

 (Thursday)

Montevarchi, the local town, feels worn out. The weekly market has moved out of the centre to the park we used to frequent when the children were younger, and there are empty shops for sale. The newsagent’s kiosk has gone, the main square where we saw a Gypsy band perform and Patti Smith once played is desolate.

The fascist tower at the end of the main street glowers with power over nothing. The café we have been to before is closed but we did discover a chaotic secondhand shop full of dusty books, unwanted china and old postcards, some of which we bought.

•

We are hanging around in San Giovanni Valdarno because Italians do not take time seriously. We are sitting in the square waiting for the museum to open. A backpacker is asleep in the ‘cave’ where miracles happened under the church, two men are mending phone lines, everyone else is at home.

The outdoor colours are sun-faded, it is cooler today. Earlier, the manageress of the restaurant we had lunch in, poured us glasses of limoncello by way of an apology for delays and a malfunctioning toilet door. She offered us more but we moved on.

Slowly, people appear. Shop shutters slide up, the museum guard pedals into view. Inside, the angel will still be telling Mary she is pregnant or about to be. Gold and white light. Intervention. Angelic appearance. Annunciation.

•

The fact that one of Fra Angelico’s three Annunciation altarpieces is in this small town still seems like a secret, although each time we visit there are more people. Even so, I get a quarter of an hour to sit alone with the painting.

     The angel is brighter

     than we remember.

     The Virgin is veiled,

     the dove projected

     down from Heaven.

     Blue and reds:

     human and holy.

     The angel holds

     Mary in his gaze

     to tell her his news.

     Adam and Eve flee

     Paradise, are sent

     into exile. Gabriel
     hovers uneasily
     over weightless colour.

     Does everything
     mean something?

     Mean anything?

     Time is interrupted,

     past and future changed.

     Stories persist.

Everything is symbolic, has a specific meaning but if you put all that aside you are left with an angel facing a woman. There is lots of gold, red and blue; the angel is clothed in pink.

The frame is newer than the painting, so there are strips of flat colour each side to make up for what might be missing. And much of the floor, along with the view from the window, is insubstantial, an abstract palette to help the perspective work.

Saturated colour, spirituality, theology, metaphor and symbolism. The remnants of a story that used to power the world.

 (Friday)

This morning the sun is back. No mist, no rain, a breeze and a view all the way to the horizon becomes a day of waiting. For the others and for the forecast thunder and rain, which duly arrives late afternoon, causing tourists in Florence to shelter in cafés whilst locals stride on or unfurl small umbrellas. It is big, splodgy summer rain, the sort we do not often get in England.

The science/zoological/anatomical museum is as haphazard as it sounds. A floor of gorgeous minerals, a locked hall of skeletons, and a vast collection of preserved animals and drawings with views into other rooms full of waxwork body parts and medical dissections.

Schoolboys run through the displays as the guards get visibly irritated. The entrance courtyard is shaded and worn, paving stones cracked and polished in equal parts.

We drove, due to a train strike, and caught one of the new trams from a park-and-ride. The city is as busy as ever but we skirted the centre and crossed the river.

For lunch, salads and meat, special pesto with pistachios added, circles of grilled aubergine. The air conditioning provided a backbeat to the busker who could not sing, a pulse of cool air and engine noise, a relentless human hum.

•

In Santo Spirito there is a Giotto or School of Giotto crucifix (depending which information board you read) above the altar, and a Donatello annunciation I have only every known in reproduction.

It is one of those vast empty churches built like a barn, which would be quiet but for the recorded command for Silence!, which is by far the loudest thing.

In the sacristy, a room at the side, hangs an early work by Michelangelo, only displayed because of its maker’s name. If you pay to visit you can also enter the cloisters.

 (Saturday)

Fireflies or glowbugs in the bushes after dark. Like fairy lights or fairies themselves, like fading traces on the screens of old televisions shutting down. Pale fluorescent, green white light. There but not there, somewhere else.

‘You can see,’ says my daughter, ‘why people believe in magic creatures. I would if I had seen these when I was younger. Well, I believed in them anyway.’

An unexpected surprise, one of the week’s highlights. Soft interruptions blinking on and off in the warm night.

(Sunday)

In Arezzo’s main square, ‘Hotel California’ is being played on a squeaky violin; the drums and guitar never arrive. The restaurants which overcharge are overcrowded with no locals to be seen. It is hot again and now the music is popular classical although you can hear the diners’ chatter from where we stand.

Mid-afternoon, swifts diving and soaring. Dry heat, lazy lunch, warm wine and blurry vision. Crap versions of well-known songs. Tuscan towers and churches. Deep shadows and burnt stone. Sunshine and architecture as time travel.

•

The church is now a museum and you cannot go in at all unless you pay. There is a glass panel behind the doorway which tends to reflect the light back, and most of the piazza has been cordoned off, although I found a shady corner where I could sit.

The posh café we visited only once remains closed. If you peer through the shutters the art deco chairs are still in place but there is more dust. The town has not changed for the better, is dirtier and emptier. Only the heat remains the same, even though it should be cooler now. Spring has become summer, summer may disappear or simply become a month or two of absolute heat.

The woman who stuck her fingers in her ears on the tram in Florence is now visiting Arezzo. There is also a squeaky dog in attendance, which sounds like a soft toy, not an actual animal. Earlier, I met Fred (short for Alfredo) outside the cathedral. He was somewhat hairy and did not squeak but barked.

•

On the way back to the car there were sirens behind us, which turned out to be police motorbikes preceding and escorting a procession of classic cars up to the cathedral square, where speeches were made and prizes awarded. I sent photos to my cousin and told him how we all cheered when the oldest car just made it up the hill on its second attempt.

•

Half a book I am struggling with left to read, only what is left in the cupboard to eat. A glass of wine left in the bottle.

Tonight, aerobatics by a pair of bats, a silent owl’s descent, and the gradual flickering arrival of fireflies again as dusk becomes night.

More bites and itching, a knocked-off blister top and a mosquito bite up my nose – these insects are keen!

 (Monday)

The prickly pear plants in Gropina have been cut back but what seems to be the same dog guards the track they grow on.

The church lit by light bleeding through thin alabaster windows is cool and empty. It is devoid of any ornamentation apart from an ornate pulpit which seems to show Celtic figures, animals and patterns.

There is no concession to tourism beyond the same few postcards there have always been. The church simply waits, squat cracked grey, damp patches throughout.

   © Rupert M Loydell

Posted on by Rupert Loydell

Small town nightmares

Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (1992)
Twin Peaks: The Return (2017)

RUPERT LOYDELL revisits David Lynch’s unforgettable dystopia

David Lynch’s Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me was the moment when the town of Twin Peaks was revealed to be a dark hellhole of occult mystery, sexual abuse, intrigue, murder and underhand business dealings as opposed to simply a cozy backdrop to a strange detective story involving demon possession and sexual intrigue.

Although the first two television series had some shocking episodes, particularly the reveal of the evil spirit Bob and Leland’s death, along with the final episode (produced at short notice under instruction from the TV company), viewers’ memories seemed mostly of a quirky and occasionally surreal soap opera whose characters were fuelled by coffee and doughnuts, had high libidos and were very good looking – not to mention a friendly visiting detective who was prone to visions and intuitive investigation.

It wasn’t all sweetness and light by any means, but the darkness was leavened by humour and friendship, not to mention the haunting soundtrack, but Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me was having none of it. Billed as a prequel, the film was also a kind of reveal of what was actually going on, ostensibly before the TV series started but allowing us to project several of the stories into that time frame as well.

Nobody, not even Agent Cooper and his fellow police force members, seemed to come out well. Everybody was conniving with somebody else, had a dodgy deal going on, and seemed complicit in prostitution, smuggling and drug running. There was a lot of looking the other way and a lot of non sequiturs and references to things we’d missed, not been shown or that Lynch felt we should know about. This included more dreams and a meet-up of demons in an upstairs room.

At the time, many of us felt cheated. My friends and I came out of the arts centre where we saw it in shocked silence. I don’t watch or like horror films, but we had just seen one that seemed to take away any pleasure we’d had whilst watching the two TV series. That seemed to be the general public and critical response, and although there was and still is a sustained discussion about Lynch’s work, and a recognition that he had done something amazing for TV, that was Twin Peaks done with.

Twenty-five years later, that turned out not to be the case. Twin Peaks: The Return was even more surreal and fragmented than the original two TV series, and although presented in 18 episodes, Lynch claimed he thought of it as one 18-hour film. Although a few storylines were continued from the 1990s, most weren’t, and the film was full of new character, including three versions of Agent Cooper, those present in one-off scenes, not to mention aliens and godlike beings and a complete blurring of reality and dream states.

In fact Twin Peaks: The Return seemed mostly a kind of return to Lynch’s Eraserhead, a disturbing and unfathomable monochrome nightmare with a deformed baby and a (literally) industrial soundtrack that highlighted Lynch’s love of photography and the fleshy paintings of Francis Bacon. It highlighted and picked up on occult connections and cultivated its own lines of influence and diversion. Whilst it offered a creation story for evil in our world (or at least, the Twin Peaks world), it also opened up an impossible number of possibilities of what was going on and why.

Interest in Twin Peaks had never really gone away, but the announcement of series 3 saw a renewed interest. Discussion forums sprang up online, a number of academic volumes were published (there would be more after The Return ended) and co-writer/director Mark Frost published two hardback volumes – The Secret History, labelled as a novel, and The Final Dossier – which sought to flesh out some of the loose ends but also act as bait for the forthcoming series.

Twin Peaks: The Return was not easy or lighthearted viewing. There were trips into space, out of time, to cities and gangland underworlds – visions, prophecies and dreams – a giant pepper-pot that was David Bowie’s character – and Audrey Horne (Sherilyn Fenn) seemingly trapped in a loveless marriage, or locked up in an asylum. There were doppelgängers, demons, a hybrid frog-insect alien, visiting bands and songwriters, and a new gang of young people forming their own romantic and sexual liaisons whilst taking new, contemporary drugs. Oh, and there was a slow-motion atomic explosion too.

And there was electricity, snaking through, by and over the land, sparking, hissing and humming. And the woodsman, an unwashed and obsessed tramp, who broadcast a poem over the radio once he had killed the DJ. No-one who hears it knows if the poem is a sacred text, a warning or a magical spell; it hypnotizes them and sends them to sleep. And there are mystical beings trying to balance and juggle good and evil, sending spirits and signs to earth to sort things out. One of the beings is the giant from Agent Cooper’s dreams in earlier series, now called the Fireman in the closing credits.  And there is the Experiment, momentarily appearing in a glass box in New York City. And, and, and…

And hundreds of walk-on parts: passers-by or passers-through, and those confined to the background. But no sign of Agent Cooper, and only tantalising glances of the town of Twin Peaks itself. Versions of Cooper are busy out in the world whilst the good/original Cooper remains trapped in the Red Room or White Lodge. Another Cooper squeezes himself through an electrical socket as a doorway from space to Earth, and comes out as a simpleton. Evil Cooper is intent on amassing a fortune and facilitating evil on the world.

The Return seems to refer to Cooper himself, since he takes most of the 18 hours to find his way back, before leaving again. He tries to undo Laura Palmer’s murder, which kicked off the whole Twin Peaks series, by finding a version of Laura and travelling back in time, forgetting all his zen ideas of acceptance and living in the moment. The version of Laura he finds (or creates) does not seem to know him or her own history, is only shocked into realisation at the end of the series, indeed the whole show, which ends with a scream.

David Lynch. Image: Wikimedia Commons

There is no resolution, although fans, critics and film buffs have used up thousands of words trying to find one, contorting ideas and scenes into ridiculously tangled cats-cradles of even more impossible narratives, story lines and time loops. Some of it, of course, makes sense: there are repetitions, similarities and repeats in the plots and filming, there are what seems to be codes and signs on the likes of stray lamp posts and campsite notice boards, and the pylons do look like owls. Nothing is what it seems, but nobody is sure what they seem to be. And nobody seems sure who they are any more either, how to get where they want to be, or why things are happening the way they are.

This time round, however, the deaths and violence, the visitations from the spirit world, the hauntings and occult leanings, all the unexplained mysteries, are once again leavened with humour and wit. Twin Peaks: The Return may not be the return we expected, and is definitely not a return to the Twin Peaks we first enjoyed visiting, but its strangeness and unknowability, its twists and turns, surprises and senseless signposts, leaven it, along with a roster of musical visits to the Roadhouse, some come-uppances and happy endings. By embracing the surreal and the senselessness of our lives and juxtaposing it with chance and the unknown, Lynch reinvented television again, just as he had 25 years earlier, producing an extended film to sit alongside his other career highlights: Eraserhead, Lost Highway and Mulholland Drive.

Posted on by Rupert Loydell

Down The Line

RUPERT LOYDELL is a writer and visual artist currently living in Cornwall. His poems have been widely published, most recently in Abridged, International Times, Litter, M58, Melange, Noon, Osiris and The Soliloquist. His book of prose poems, The Weight of Air, is forthcoming from KFS Press, and Recuperative Theology, a collaboration with H.L. Hix, from Amethyst Press

DOWN THE LINE


All we can do is try to find others
who see the world the same way
we do, use lines and colour in
a similar manner, trying to make
sense of where we find ourselves
and what is around us. How did
we end up here, what are all
these people saying, how come
they have no interest in paint
or words? Look at that sky,
listen to the birds, the way
the clouds spread out tonight
as the sun fades again, pink
then orange, blue and grey.
We paint only for ourselves
and hope others might be
looking and listening down
the line, believe in a moment
where things make sense.




Posted on by Rupert Loydell

Four poems by Rupert Loydell

RUPERT LOYDELL is the editor of Stride and a contributing editor to International Times. He has many books of poetry in print, including The Age of Destruction and Lies (Shearsman), Preloved Metaphors (Red Ceilings) and Damage Limitation (zimZalla). He has co-authored many collaborative works, and edited anthologies for Knives Forks & Spoons Press, Shearsman, and Salt. He also writes about post-punk music, pedagogy, poetry and film for academic journals and books

HIDDEN IN PLAIN SIGHT

Events hamper the imagination.

Spirituality mostly revolves around

complexity and trying to reframe

the impossible as now believable.

Religion is essentially a big office

producing the new world we might

be longing for, a plague appropriate

for an England where everyone is

morally corrupt, bombs explode

and laboratory monkeys scream.

The beautiful afterwards of history

is a revelation but questions remain,

encapsulating the cultural logic of

empire and ghost voice corporations.

Faith is a clumsy metaphor for fugitive

moments within, an uneasy philosophy

ever reliant upon misread scriptures.

Time circles and collapses, whilst

readers are the only ones whose

overwhelming melancholia can be

salvaged from the so-called death of

gleeful affirmation and are capable of

waiting on the platform for salvation,

secrets always hidden in plain sight.

Like all theories of everything, it is

too simple and leads to longer words

and inevitable destruction, might be

described as superstitious nonsense.

© Rupert M Loydell

ENTANGLED

The idea of place is a central theme, journeys are at the core. Writing allows me to displace your narratives and replace them with things more relevant to my choice of subject matter, an endless gathering up blindness and doubt.

I am not bothered with chapter endings or pauses between moments. Instead, I allow a series of bizarre events to unfold the story and totally forget audience comprehension.

Verisimilitude intrigues and consoles me quite a bit when performing the impossible, which is mostly misdirection, a musical take on freedom as I work on my wondering, making my stories unrealistic to fascinate younger people.

All things can be visions, shining through the blurring of upside down books offering a route through labyrinths that become the when and the was, different possibilities and devices to heighten ambiguity.

© Rupert M Loydell

POSSIBLE DEFINITIONS

A poem is two things. First, it is an abstract

idea. Second, it is a trace of how the author

has used language, a way to gain knowledge

about the process of acquiring knowledge.

Writing is an act of displacement, evidence of

one possible arrangement of images and words,

each chosen by its author, always reliant upon

what shapes or letterforms mean or represent.

The page or line break is an imaginary boundary

which allows for rhythms, associative thinking,

different forms of and routes to understanding.

Language is always rooted in specific moments

and personal circumstances despite any claim

to universality. It is not only how it is written

or said but also what is heard, seen and read.

Words can only ever be stolen or borrowed.

© Rupert M Loydell

COMMON SENSE

At what point will common sense prevail?

When will the last bus arrive? Will it ever

stop raining? Probably never, soon, yes

of course. There are many ways to think

about drawing and you must understand

that perspective is an imposed system

of representation, not an actual thing.

My studio’s awash again, cacti sodden,

jugs and plastic cartons full of rain but

no canvasses or works on paper harmed.

I hope to find courage to look the storm

in the eye, contemplate what is missing

from my life; have no use for concealment,

can only read what is put in front of me,

try to hear the music, work out the shape

or form of these fragmented narratives

and random episodes. If there is too much

storytelling I am gone. Let me make up

links between moments, order the scenes,

work out how to understand juxtaposition,

collage and remix. Epiphanies are patently

false, happy endings a literary device that

makes things all too easy and predictable.

We must rescue ourselves from the swamp

of literary seduction, false promises, and

question everything before the water rises,

bus services are cancelled and we no longer

recognise common sense even as it sneaks

up behind us to bite us on the bum and

make us behave in a more reasonable way.

© Rupert M Loydell