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Life: An Audio Tour by Jules Horne
BBC Radio 4 Afternoon Play
Wednesday 30th Jan, 2.15pm
Directed by Philip Howard, produced by Marilyn Imrie for Catherine Bailey Limited.
Jenny ...... Sandy McDade
Joe ...... Lewis Howden
Bella ...... Edith MacArthur
Bev ...... Alex Elliott
Jenny is trying to win Joe back after her disastrous affair. Her unusual strategy is to offer him an audio tour of the small Scottish town of Kelso.
Particle fictions have reached 100, and this is the first time I've landed on a personal Bebo page. Siobhan Clarke is Ian Rankin's fictional detective, and a girl in Aberdeenshire. Hope she doesn't mind me stopping by.
sleep think wonder watch love lust sing
eat sleep dream wake rise bath sing
eat drink dance drink fall hurt sing
sleep groan sleep groan rise bath creak
croak eat croak moan eat sit croak
read watch read watch sit watch croak
sip eat sip watch sit groan rise
move wash think sip eat shit walk
walk move see watch blink watch sing
blink watch see walk smile watch sing
see walk smile watch wonder think sing
see think wish watch wonder dream sing
27/1/2008
Ian Rankin
The Black Book, 1993
p 93
This is a particle fiction. The title phrase came from a Sylvia Plath poem in a 'birthday'-themed anthology.Once again (and this is happening increasingly often), it led to a deadly site. The joy and discovery of books leads to the pushing mundanity of web. It's an advertising-led medium. It's usually trying to sell something - a product, a policy, a person. I'm heading for 100 particle fictions and thinking about a new rule. Maybe something to do with inverted commas. Meanwhile, the stories keep coming.
Arabic, Chinese!
This process guarantees accurate translation. Completely, 100% accurate. That's no idle boast. We're not talking dictionary-led, one-to-one fumbling, or computer-supported bollocks (mind the French). We're not even talking native speakers, mother-tongue targeting, or stylistic polishing by copyeditors who know the weight of a word.
We're talking 100%. Literally. Your customers will have exactly the same experience in the translated text as everyone has in the original. They will understand the same concepts, feel the same emotions, soak up the same messages as anyone else reading the text on the other side of the world. They'll enjoy the same puns, the same flavours. Their neural networks will fire exactly the same - every word, every sentence.
How does it work? Well, such accuracy doesn't come cheap.
We're talking mind transplants.
That's right. We pipe that other mindset direct to your customers' brains. Like a juice-feed. It's like putting on a new head. At once, they can feel every nuance felt by a native speaker in their chosen target language. Even nuances they didn't necessarily notice in the original. That's because the minds we transplant are first-class. They'll be awakened to a whole new experience of language, concept, culture, poetry.
And advertising. Of course. We don't want to get too abstract here.
You'll find us a little pricier than our competitors, to be sure.
It might hurt a little.
But it's a whole new concept in translation.
8/1/2008
René Graziani, ed.
The Naked Astronaut, 1983
p 89
Goes to Pour
He opens the carafe and goes to pour. First, he takes a deep sniff. The scent fills his nose and tickles the back of his throat.
It's a scent of primrose and mint, with a slight scoring of tar. There's a note of absinthe uncorked and a acciacatura of lemon zest. He inhales down past his epiglottis and finds a touch of albatross – a week-old chick, still fluffed and flightless. It dances particles with a tip of brine. Yes, the sea is on there, the salt and tang and the plastic bobbing bottles, perhaps with a sea-diluted drop of fizzy water from a southern French source. He can't name the village. It's on the edge of his tongue, his tissue, his memory.
And it's evaporating fast, mellowing into badger pelt and sunrise, string quartet and brocaded curtain.
It's losing him. The scent has wandered into the room and risen to the cornices.
He sighs and pours and drinks.
© 2007 Jules Horne
2/1/2008
David Greig
Damascus, 2007
p 57
http://www.charlestoncitypaper.com/gyrobase/Content?oid=oid%3A12303
Heading towards 90 particle fictions, and lines have been creeping in. Poetry? Or just very short prose paragraphs? What's the weight of a carriage return? And the music? Discuss.
Sense Alive?
A note from the universe:
This is it, folks. Sorry to break it to you, but there ain't no afterlife.
You kind of know that already, but best make it official.
Otherwise, you could squander what you have.
Which is quite a lot, when you look at it.
You've got a reasonably long straw in the scheme of things.
Not that there's a scheme.
You've got food and clothes and shelter and a reasonable vehicle to carry your soul around in.
Not that there's a soul.
Sorry – didn't mean to break that quite so bluntly.
Your reasonable vehicle is all you have.
It's quite a feat of engineering.
Not that there's an engineer.
It's all chanced together quite beautifully, yet you don't half waste it.
So when you ask 'in what sense alive?', I'm nonplussed.
What you feel is all you get.
Try to feel something more constructive.
3/1/2008
David Mercer
Plays: One, 1990
p 111
