self portrait of a young man as an artist thing

Ed Mayhew - comedian, poet, fiction writer and screen writer. @writerofsound :: @saltcomedy

[edmayhewwriter]

Play on sounds

Sentient sentiment scented in sediment

Early Earth earnest

Wildly whirled world service

Surfaced.

Formerly formally furnaced

Now furnished and famished

Grim grimace as grime garbage waste

Waits like an overweight waist

'til a heard herald hurled

To our wastrel whirled world

Dusts himself off

And brings sense to our sediment.

[edmayhewwriter]

The door swung loose on its hinges like a sick advent calendar. The lock was shattered. Neighbours said four lads on mopeds had  smashed their way in with a hammer, raided the house and left in three minutes.

Standing in his bright red suit, a sack at his feet, any passing child would assume the chimney was blocked and he had simply taken extreme measures.

Having a big white beard hadn’t paid off today. He had fluffed the line, 'Hohoho', "which", Harry told his niece when she rang, “is pretty much a staple.” Suppressing a cough, the second “Ho” had become an otherworldly hissing. Harry argued that with a lifestyle like Santa’s - North Pole - open sleigh at that altitude - it was no wonder he’d picked up pneumonia.

“They didn’t bite when I said it was method acting.” “Did you get my postcard?” she asked. “It’s on the coffee table, love. Going to make myself a brew when I get in and take my time over it.” “It’s just a postcard.” “But it’s from you. Hang on, I’ll call you later.”

That was when he had arrived home. A policeman stood at his gate, flashing blue lights reflecting eerily off him, trying to suppress a smirk at the man in the red suit. Harry removed his hat, revealing hair that retained some of its brown.

After taking some details, the policeman left apologetically. Catching the thieves looked unlikely.

Inside it was a mess. They had taken the DVD player, his iPad (‘good job I backed up my photos’), a remote control! (‘Stupid boys!’) He almost laughed.

Then he clocked the coffee table. They had cleared off with his post. Mostly junk and bank statements. But no sign of the postcard from his niece.

Harry snapped. He stormed through the house, swearing loudly at every mark that they had made, smelling their putrid breath everywhere, boxing their heads on the pillows of his bed. He roared, describing the pain he would cause if he caught them.

In the hallway he threw his jacket down and bellowed, “It’s Christmas FOR THE LOVE OF GOD!”

Then he looked up. The door had swung open and on the street, a four year old girl stared at him. Mum shielded her eyes and quickly dragged her away.

Harry felt suddenly deflated, the red rage subsiding to a depression. “I hope they crash their stinking mopeds,” he said as he cascaded down into the sofa.

Then from the corner of his eye he saw the waste paper bin. Sticking into view, was a picture of the Swiss Alps. Harry couldn’t believe it. In a moment of Christmas charity, the crooks for whatever reason, had discarded his precious possession in the bin.

Bursting into laughter, Harry sprang to the bin.

“Haha! I take it all back! You’re good lads!” he yelled, and almost, “hohoho!”

In the kitchen, kettle bubbling, a black Labrador trotted in. “Out at last, Rudolph? You’re a useless guard dog, you know?" the old man chided as he kicked off his boots to spend an hour with his niece.

[edmayhewwriter]

Thanks to StreathamChurch.com for printing the latest Streatham Tales - a story about an explosive set of neighbours. I’ve been giving out limited edition copies around Streatham. Next one out December 1.

FIREWORKS

Thrash metal? Trash metal more like. The noise (‘music’ would be the wrong word) blared from her neighbour’s door as she battled up the concrete stairs of Reformation Court with a little over two armfuls of paper bags and a half-blind Scottie dog named Doris.

‘Kev’ leant against the frame of his open door. For someone who enjoyed the sound of lorries scraping against each other, he was uncomfortably happy.

“Mrs Jamieson!” He always greeted her as if she were a missing person returned from the dead, arms spread like a scarecrow, eyes wide as a startled bunny and a grin as moronic as both. He launched into a locomotive train of thought about the weather and how The Police were wrong, you can’t take it with you.

He had an index finger missing from where he tried to light a firework with a cigarette as a teenager. ‘An accident like that ought to mellow you,’ she thought, and it seemed illogical to her that his character had remained unaffected by his disfigurement. He was without rival her all-time most annoying neighbour.

Mrs Jamieson eventually managed to wriggle out of the conversation. She dropped her bags by the radiator and checked the time. Kev’s yammering had only left her with ten minutes before she was out again to bingo. Just enough time to fill up Dorrie’s bowl and take a quick drag of a cigarette, stubbing it out on the window sill. Retirement was all go.

She picked her way through the lounge, littered with identical brown bags. Fireworks. Stupid things. Money getting blown up.

But she was on the board of her granddaughter’s school and her flat overlooked the school. Roman candles, Catherine wheels, those boxy ones that go screeeech, pop. Her whole sitting room was stacked with the things, ready to be blown to bits. ‘They better work.’

She checked her watch again, swore, gave Dorrie a quick scratch on the neck and hurried out for the bus. The door slammed behind her.

Two floors down, an enormous bang erupted from above her head. At first she thought a bomb had gone off. She looked up. Nothing. Then - screech, pop, screeech, pop - coming from inside her flat.

Her cigarette must have fallen off the window sill when she slammed the door. She limped quickly back up the stairs. Another bang. And a bright flash.

Reaching the third floor, the door to her flat was broken in. Kev turned to her, fire extinguisher in hand. Relief flooded his face. “Mrs Jamieson.” It was silent for a moment - then a whimper, and Doris pattered through the broken door. A roman candle caught light and hurtled towards the door. Kev just managed to shut it.

Kev offered Mrs Jamieson his arm and led her outside quickly. Once they were safe in front of the court, they turned back and looked up at the red-green flashes in Mrs Jamieson’s sitting room. Kev opened a can from his pocket and sat on the front wall. Mrs Jamieson perched next to him and together they watched the show.

[edmayhewwriter]

Streatham Tales: Beat

The woods are alive with the sound of House Trance. Hammer bone pounds anvil as her ears fill with the deep tremors of rhythm and bass. She peels off the beaten paths of Tooting Bec Common and threads through the brambles. Bau-Ts-Bau-Ts-Bau-Ts-Bau. This is me - this is my soundtrack to life. Bau-Ts-Bau. 

An old man sits on a bench, watching as she trundles past, bulging out of lycra leggings and a loose fluorescent pink top sagging over her shoulders. He raises his stick to greet her, but she staggers on by, her headphones leaking muted, clattering music.

Inside her ear, the soaring strings fire her along the path, synths lift her, driving her forwards. She glides effortlessly alongside the athletics track, speeding past the athletes warming up on the tracks. ’Something too straight about running on a track,’ she thinks, ‘Lines, stop watches, warming up, the whole track as flat as — my chest.’

Bau-Ts-Bau-Ts-Bau.

She hurdles a fallen stick unnecessarily, feeling more dynamic as she does. Trees explode over her head, each trunk spreading into branches like a crescendo of fireworks caught at the moment of eruption. Bau-Ts-Bau-Ts. Brambles effulgent, nettles unconfined spill into the beaten track - the beating track. Her heart keeps pace.

A stitch needles her in the side and she is suddenly aware that she’s slowing. This was the first run since the old red operation but she’s surprised to be breathing so painfully already. ‘Told you it was too soon to enter a half marathon,’ some part of her says. Outwardly, she grimaces, “Aagh” and turns for home.

After climbing the alpine mountain known locally as Becmead Avenue, she takes a welcome wait at the long phase of lights opposite the cinema. As she pauses, moving her legs on the spot to keep warm, the music changes to a podcast she downloaded to pass the long hospital days. The murmuring conversation of the two book reviewers brings her slowly to a sense of self-consciousness. She knew the lycra bottoms would be too tight for her, for now at least. And the pink shirt was non-negotiable. It’s the searing in her side, and now in her calves that’s the embarrassing thing. A year of chemo has taken more than the outward shine from her. This year wore her down to her depths. It feels like one breath could destroy her resolve and make her entirely disintegrate. She steps onto the road.

A car horn blares and she salsa-steps back onto the kerb, her heart shocked into action again. The silver Mercedes continues to blast unkindly as the driver accelerates away - as if she may have just missed the fact that she’d nearly died for a second time that year, or worse, dented his bonnet. 

“As a post-rationalist author,” the podcast enthuses, “she habitually foregrounds that the narrative began elsewhere and always continues after the last chapter, beyond those arbitrary book-ends that we call ‘covers’.” The runner gradually brings her breathing under control. She decides that the nearly-being of the running-over is a sign that it’s time to get hold of some chocolate. It would calm her nerves. And she’s earned it. After all - she had survived.

[edmayhewwriter]

STREATHAM TALES - KITES

Dayo watched the skies fill with bright canvases, not understanding how they could bear to stay airborne. She knew the physics well enough, how currents of air were pushing the little kites up, up from the ground. But her heart was heavy. Flight, bright colours, that imprecise dancing, all became foreign ideas. She could not comprehend what the faces cartooned onto the kites were smiling about. She did not recognise the characters. And who was she to them?

This year Streatham Common Kite Day had fallen on Pentecost Sunday. Dayo remembered the strange story of the first Pentecost, a few weeks after Easter. Eleven bowed heads together in a house down a Jerusalem backstreet. The rushing wind filling the room. The gentle flames resting on each of their heads. And the sudden babble of voices as they spoke in different languages.

A man with a drooping catfish moustache flew a kite in the shape of a falcon above her. Its broad wings and fanned tail bucked and kicked just as if it were alive. Dayo was reminded of the poem Windhover. My heart in hiding, stirred for a bird.

But she was immersed in the sheer plod of it all. What, after all, were her dreams but a flimsy canvas, thrown about by the wind, and anchored by a heavy reel to the ground?

How had it got to this?

The depression had crept up on her. One day, after another drudge of night shifts, she woke up and felt the sadness. Just sadness sitting in her heart. She had tried to understand it. To excavate it. To unpick why she felt this way. Then one morning she woke alone, tears flowing unstoppably. She came to despise the discomfort of her bed but for long, weeping weeks, she had found herself unable to leave it, even though it meant making her sons late for school again. Instead she stared at the ceiling making shapes from the stains.

She was only at Kite Day because her boys, Zachy and Eli, had dragged her there. They played and shouted, tumbling over each other on the fresh-cut grass, oblivious to her as always.

But - as she looked at the falcon above her. My heart in hiding, stirred for a bird.

***

That was then.

She looks back on that day as the first stirring of something - somewhere between a child's memory of joy and an adult wonder.

Her senses reignited that day - it was the first day she cooked for her children in months, and the first day she picked up the phone to cry herself dry to her listening auntie. The first of many.

Today, her sons, a little taller and louder, shout excitedly as they make shapes out of the clouds. The kites dance imprecisely above her again like dozens of flames. And it no longer feels like a babble.

Today as Dayo raises her hands to shield her eyes from the sun, she sees the people who hold the lines: families; friends; the old teaching the young. She notices children's concentration, the tense attempts to make their kite fly, and the joy when the thing soars.

The rushing wind sweeps past her. It seems to her that, weaving his way between the bright kites, the Spirit of God hovers over the common. Dayo takes up the thread of her kite, grips it firmly, and as Zachy throws it high, she begins to run.

[edmayhewwriter]

Rich and Poor

Polar opposites attracting Smash-crashing in a wedding  Of love and inconvenience, Leaving, as the dust settles, a living marriage And, for this poor man, A cancelled debt.

[edmayhewwriter]

Tears

Ripping down my cheeks,  They cut their fluid pathways; Slice skin off sad bones.

[edmayhewwriter]

Artifice

You don’t know how many words I didn’t write. You didn’t see the phrases I re-shaped, rolled around my tongue and rejected, the sentences I unpicked, the paragraphs I un-wrote.  Finding what remains when all of the rubble is chipped away. That is the art of writing.  But think about all the shards of stories that were lost along the way. That is why it is called “Artifice” - the blending of art and sacrifice. 

So spare a thought for the endless lost fragments, secretly treasured by writers, that could fill the world’s libraries with high-piled books ten thousand times, and which, owing to the tragedy that we are constantly forced to choose, never saw the wonder of a reader’s eye.

[edmayhewwriter]

Taste of Things to Come

An excerpt from my introduction to Refined by H. Jack Livingstone, which nearly made it into the book. The introduction is made up of tidied up bits from my e-letters to Jack over the course of about a year. Music, like poetry, creates associations that powerfully affect our imaginations: an Arabic scale can transport you to Mecca; the diminished fifth (known as ‘the Devil’s chord’) signifies angst unresolved; the whole-tone scale creates magic. And just as the smell of bobotie takes us back to Mpopho, so Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony always transports me back to the Royal Albert Hall on the day I got engaged. Refined, published 7 October 2017. To order a copy please email pls.inform.ed [at] gmail [dot] com

[edmayhewwriter]

Margins Magazine is launching its 3rd edition on 7 October, featuring the photography of the multi-award-winning Kieran Dodds.  I’m really excited to have produced the magazine. 

The launch PARTY will feature live spoken word from poet Rob Auton, and myself, among others.

Morphe Arts are also publishing Refined - a collection of poems from H. Jack Livingstone. He’s a debut poet, but has been working on this book for something like four years now. And the book boasts an appendix penned by a little known writer called ... Ed Mayhew. Really excited! If you can make it to the launch, please do:

Details:

Oct 7, 2-4.30 The Phoenix, 37 Cavendish Sq, W1G 0PP £6 entry plus 1 book

All good!

[edmayhewwriter]

Five reasons why disagreement is more tolerant than keeping silent

I often come across the view that religions / faiths / systems should keep their beliefs to themselves, and that everyone has the right to believe what they believe. This is a contradictory view, because everyone who has told me this has imposed their own belief system on me - who believe in open discussion and discourse. In Syria and around the world, we are seeing what happens when a religious group refuses to engage in conversation. 

It is not intolerant to challenge someone on their beliefs. Here are five reasons why:

5. IF I DISAGREE WITH YOU, I HAVE TO TEST MY OWN BELIEFS.

It is actually a risk to take your beliefs into discussion - whether a work colleague who might think you are insane, a friend who has known you for years and might take offence, or a stranger that would otherwise know nothing of what you believe. In the worlds of politics or science, we expect discussion in order to further everyone’s understanding of “truth”. If we smile, nod and agree with each other in the world of religion, our own beliefs go untested, which is more comfortable, but allows as much wrong thinking as right thinking. 

If post-modernity has taught us anything, it’s not to trust our own perception of things. We need outside help.

4. IF I DISAGREE WITH YOU, YOU ARE ALLOWED TO BE DISTINCTIVE FROM ME.

“All roads lead to Heaven” is a popular universalist belief, in a lot of ways influenced by Hinduism (and yoga) in the UK. This is the height of tolerance that says, “It’s all Love and we’re all the same, and anyone who disagrees with us is wrong, but that’s ok, they’re still right, they just don’t know it.”

Believing there is good in everything is a perfect protection from the conflict of believing that someone intelligent might be wrong or that an action might actually be evil. However, it simply cannot be true that all religions are the same as they have conflicting teaching. Yes words like “peace”, “love” and “faith” are attached to them, because these are the essential aims of religions - but key distinctions arise in the specific religions about how such values are attained.

Take, the word “peace” for example. It may be attached to the faith, but isn’t it important how that term is defined? If peace means the suppression of all apostates, that is one religious system striving rightly for peace. In another example peace is the internal balancing of oneself and accepting that I am nothing. Peace in Christianity is not just with each other, but with God, who we rebel against, and naturally try to overthrow, but the end of war against God is bought by the peace offering of Jesus’ death on the cross. You see, these are all different views of peace, and all provoke different responses - one believer takes up a Kalashnikov rifle to bring peace, another sits in a room and focuses on their breathing, and another worships a man as if he is God and has his head blown off by a Kalashnikov because of the offence this causes. 

If we don’t talk about these differences, then we blur it all together into one confusing ball of assumptions, called religion, and it becomes a taboo that everyone is afraid to discuss. However, if we can be specific, as post-modernity teaches us to be, then we value the individual more highly. Instead, silent tolerance assumes a sacred / secular divide in conversation. 

3. IF I DISAGREE WITH YOU, I AGREE TO LISTEN TO AND BE INTERESTED IN YOU

The human virtue of curiosity is the catalyst for all human development. The exploration of the whole world, discovery of inventions and experimenting with new architecture have made the human experience bigger, broader, better. 

And yet, that curiosity doesn’t translate when it comes to faith. At the mention of God, people say, “I’m not religious”, “That’s nice for you”, or the worst response I get is, “I really respect religious people. I wish I could have faith.” The latter is the most frustrating for me, because it shuts discussion down; they have ticked the ‘tolerance’ box, but they don’t think I have anything valuable to say. It’s as if faith is a hobby for me, akin to angling or knitting, instead of what it really is, a window through which all of life is experienced. 

Personally, I think this is ruder than disagreeing with me. Curiosity shows a value for the thing to be explored. Not being willing to engage in conversation is the same as saying, “I think you’re wrong, but I’m not going to waste my time on you telling you why I think that.”

Likewise, anyone who simply gives their own version of events without stopping to listen to the other side is not communicating, they’re spouting; they’re not engaging, they’re vomiting their own perspective. I hope you’ll comment on this post, as it would be great to hear what you think. I don’t see this as one-way communication. Have you experienced anything like this? Am I representing your beliefs fairly?

2. IF I KEEP SILENT, YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT I REALLY THINK

How many times have you smiled, nodded and not said anything because you thought someone was mad, and then gone away and talked to a friend behind that person’s back?

Maybe you’re more virtuous than I am, and haven’t done that. By assuming that this false view can’t be corrected, it is left unchallenged, which gives the person an unreal perspective.

The early rounds of X Factor are enough proof that silence can be cruel. There are people who go on X Factor believing that they have what it takes to win, who somehow can’t hit a single note right. At no stage were they ever challenged that this was not what they should be doing. The result, they are humiliated on TV in front of everyone. Why? Because people kept silent. 

1. IF I DISAGREE WITH YOU, I RESPECT YOU ENOUGH TO BE ABLE TO DEFEND YOUR BELIEFS

Perhaps you have a really thought through belief system. Perhaps you haven’t given it that much examination and it’s based on a hodge podge of journalistic viewpoint, something Dan Brown once told me, and a love of alcohol.

If I challenge you to examine what you believe in the light of new evidence, that isn’t me being proud or obnoxious, that’s valuing your reason. From my experience, examining my Christian beliefs has always given me more reason to believe, not less, and I am more convinced of the death and resurrection of Jesus than I have ever been. That doesn’t mean you should believe me - but if you haven’t read the Bible, or engaged a real Christian with questions about why they believe what they believe, then you are treating a lot of people with contempt, and can’t call yourself a true universalist who values all beliefs. How can you value a belief you don’t know enough about to disagree with? 

And what if our own beliefs get challenged in the process? Oh no! How terrible! We may be forced to think about it! Discussions of faith should never be about winning an argument - they should always be done in respect, and in gentleness. It should always be ok to say to someone, “I don’t know, but thank you for challenging me on that. I’ll look into that and get back to you.” 

This may make you afraid - there’s a lot to learn and an infinite amount of views. That is exactly the problem I’m addressing with this argument. Why should a million view points make us afraid? Surely that is a realm of so much curiosity and creativity, of miracles, of truth, of mystery, of lies, of morality and forgiveness, that we should be excited to try to perceive the world through as many eyes as possible, praying as we do, that God would show himself to us.

[edmayhewwriter]

FIVE REASONS WHY DISAGREEMENT IS MORE TOLERANT THAN KEEPING SILENT (A reblog of a post I wrote a while back)

[edmayhewwriter]

Love Streatham #LoveStreatham local churches in Streatham Hill, Streatham High Road, Streatham Green, Streatham Common, the Tate Library and The Rookery

Yay! I built my first ever webpage :) Love Streatham or LoveStreatham is a network of churches in Streatham and I built a landing page for them within our church website.  Together we organise community events such as the Love Streatham Fun Day, a free day of events on Streatham Common. Next one coming up in July 2017.

#lovestreatham

[edmayhewwriter]

New Year’s Pleasure-lutions

It’s impossible to get a spot on our local squash courts. This flurry usually lasts until mid-February, with all the people who have bought new gear in the sales and want to lose the Christmas fat. New Year’s Resolutions are always about self-improvement - how can I make my life better? How can I be seen by others as a better person. 

This year, I am looking at resolutions slightly differently. Instead of weighing myself with guilt that I’m not the person I want to be, I want to change the way I look at the world. 

This year, I’ve decided to make 5 New Year’s Pleasure-lutions, with the focus on taking more pleasure in the simple things.

1. Enjoy your food - I have a tendency to wolf things down and eat too much. This year, I resolve to chew, to savour the flavours in things and learn to be a better cook for others.

2. Say no - Instead of racing away with too many things, so that I can’t do them well, I resolve to take time on the projects at hand and do them until they’re done.

3. Go for walks - recently voted the most relaxing thing to do, I’d like to spend more time enjoying being outdoors this year.

4. Make your family happy - whether a romantic meal with my wife (see point 1) or taking the time to phone my Grandad, there are lots of ways that I can do better. And very little makes me happier than my nieces laughing.

5. Take time to be satisfied in a job well done. I will now spend a few moments reflecting on how great this list is. 

Thanks Tumblr. Happy New Year!

[edmayhewwriter]

Finalists of the Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards — The judges have selected the best works from over 2,000 submissions.

[edmayhewwriter]

Fuse

Two lone atoms Fuse. Join. Eventually one.

Too much power Surge. Trip. Suddenly none. 

[edmayhewwriter]

Now that’s a GIF!

[edmayhewwriter]

Tales of Woolly Edge - The Search for an Agent!

I have recently finished a first draft of Tales of Woolly Edge Part 1. A stranger arrives at a village where story-telling is a currency, and begins to be drawn into the stories himself.

Now the difficult bit. Getting the book to agents and publishers. I’m coming to writing with more nouse about putting words together than knowledge of the publishing world. So I went online to look for some help.

I came across agenthunter.co.uk, who have a great deal for people in my position. They offer access to their list of UK agents, agencies and publishers for free for six months, in return for an honest review of their service.

So, I signed up, and here’s the review:

It can be really daunting knowing where to begin looking for agents. Having access to the information provided by Agent Hunter is a brilliant first step. It is unfortunately not a magic wand and there’s a lot of trawling still to do - but as far as introducing the key literary agencies, agents, and submission process, Agent Hunter has done a very thorough job. 

It must be a Forth Bridge project to keep the data up to date, so I’m very grateful for the chance to access the service for free. 

PROS You can search by a number of different parameters, the most useful of which are: Experience; Whether they are actively building their lists of authors; whether they use Twitter. 

The information seems thorough and up-to-date, and the search is quick. 

It was quick to sign up for a free trial.

A great gateway for beginning to understand the publishing world better.

CONS As most of the agents seem to have a broad brief, if you’re writing Fiction, as I am, the genre search feature doesn’t narrow down the field as much as I would like. However, if you’re genre is more specific, I would expect it to limit the search results much more.

As there’s no hierarchy, it’s hard to know whether the agents will be any good based solely on their profiles. Having said that, this isn’t the service they claim to provide, so I can’t complain about something they’re not offering! I mention this merely for the sake of a user’s expectations. 

OVERALL I’ve enjoyed using the service so far and have a good list of agents to start sending the work to. Job done!