Hi there,
I'm Howard from the West of England - specifically Bristol - which is in the extremely wet bit just under Wales.
I make art (of the conceptual variety - my last project involved me dressing as a Minotaur in a business suit and lurking in underpasses and shopping centres scaring the locals). I also write long winded and frequently incomprehensible essays and articles on Art History and Film Studies, some of which get published and occasionally paid for - my specialist fields being Surrealism, Minimalism, Medieval Italian Gothic, European Cinema and Japanese Horror.
That's my 'day job' - although since I'm largely nocturnal during the winter months when I'm far too grumpy to be safely allowed to communicate with other people, that is a slightly arbitary term for it.
When not doing that, or finding lame excuses not to do the gardening, I write short stories that are either horrific fantasy or fantasy horror (or even, more likely, deranged nonsense) and there's fifty thousand odd words of the first draft of a novel sitting on my hard drive waiting for me to summon up the strength to go back to and start redrafting. I'm yet to have any of my fiction published, but hope springs eternal.
Quite where I stop being a writer and start being an artist isn't that clear - there's a kind of wobbly bit in the middle where the two things come together, although this might just be an excuse for my chronic inability to focus on one thing at a time.
Being British I'm frequently grumpy, cynical and sarcastic, but extremely polite with it. It's also very wise to only take about 10% of what I say seriously. Including that. I veer between being extremely talkative and bouncy to utterly introverted with very little in between, so if I disappear without notice I haven't died, I'm merely either hiding under the bedclothes shouting "Go Away!" at anyone who comes near or I'm buried under a pile of references books attempting to meet a deadline that I've known about for months and promised I definitely wouldn't ignore until the last minute this time round.
I also have the habit of making what was intended to be a short post into a lengthy burble with far too many sub-clauses.
So that's me.
Hello.
Being British I'm frequently grumpy, cynical and sarcastic, but extremely polite with it. It's also very wise to only take about 10% of what I say seriously. Including that. I veer between being extremely talkative and bouncy to utterly introverted with very little in between, so if I disappear without notice I haven't died, I'm merely either hiding under the bedclothes shouting "Go Away!" at anyone who comes near or I'm buried under a pile of references books attempting to meet a deadline that I've known about for months and promised I definitely wouldn't ignore until the last minute this time round.
omg me too.
HEY! another brit. You sound fun. Question: what do you have for tea?
Thanks for the welcome both.
Hmm - easy questions first eh?
Sexuality - Gay but of the rare badly-dressed, non-dancing subspecies (We don't do the dancey thing, 'cos we hate disco. Taste in music: minimalistic Scandinavians making noises like humpbackwhales playing cellos in tin buckets at one end and people playing guitars with chainsaws at the other. And John Cage.). Just about to celebrate 15 years with my bloke, who after having put up with my eccentricities for so long is clearly either a saint or a maniac.
Tea - Pan fried chicken breast in lime and chilli marinade with herb salad. (I do conform to the stereotype when it comes to cooking, being unable to even cook a burger without chucking something French on top of it.)
"so....post rock and metal?"
Yep that pretty much sums it up, with occasional forays into minimalistic techno in awkward time signatures, 70s prog and Krautrock, 11th century classical and when we're feeling especially unfashionable, folk.
"I'm the pan-kid of the asocial and un-camp variety."
I have an image of a slightly grumpy Satyr, which strikes me as an extremely sensible model of behaviour.
Thanks and Hi Clutch and Matt.
Funny to hear Bristol described as tough, it seems pretty chilled to us. Mind you we did move here after ten years living in South East London, so if there aren't burning mattresses and people beatng each up with crowbars on our doorstep we feel like we're living the high life.
Oh yeah I guessed that - just couldn't resist the pun, given 'Demigod' and what with me having an obsession with Greek mythology :D
Atcually now I think about it, I believe the root of the 'pan' bit of 'pansexual' comes from the Greek god, as he was quiet well known for being pretty open minded when it came to sowing his wild oats - there's an amazing and startlingly biological accurate sculpture in the Naples museum of him having a, um, romantic moment with a goat.
EDIT: Gah - five posts in and I'm already rambling about classical art and linguistics. I'll have totally collapsed into self-parody by the end of the evening.
Oh nonsense, it was concise and to the point. That's a skill I've yet to master - even my shopping lists have footnotes.
And as for 'worst writer' - well I believe that's just a sign of having high standards. At least that's my excuse for frequently ending up laying on the floor in a pile of shredded manuscript screaming "I can't doooooo this."
@Matt Though my interest in such photos is largely academic, I believe the bored, skinny, pale and smoking look is considered very attractive. At least that might explain why my other half has stuck around so long.
@Courtney - *a 4 minutes and 33 second silence in appreciation*
@Courtney Hahaha! Well if you also like sushi, Lars Von Trier films and go a bit wobbly when you see Chris Evans in his Captain America outfit I'd say it's a definite possibility. And if someone tried to enforce dancing on me in a work environment, I think 4'33'' would be the only reasonable response - though this might be why I sit in a shed making strange things rather than having a proper job like a grown-up.
@J.Y. if that makes you mad, don't watch this.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zY7UK-6aaNA
@Howard Sushi, check. Chris Evans, fucking check. Movies, though, are not my strong point. I sleep through them. Dancing is not a strong point either -- I pretended to answer the phone and then held an extensive conversation with a guest about the merits of trust falls while my manager and the housekeepers danced to a generic Bon Jovi song.
Awww, then you probably wouldn't last five minutes in a LvT film before losing consciousness. They're usually very beautiful but very slow and usually emotionally exhausting (After going to see "Dancer In The Dark" the bloke commented "Well that was like being beaten slowly with a very well-crafted baseball bat.").
As an example, here's the opening of his latest, "Melancholia" (which as the name suggests, isn't exactly a bundle of laughs) and you'll see that even when a planet crashes into Earth destroying it, it happens veeeeeerrrrry slooooooowly.
And despite my earlier assertion that I never dance - I did for a while in my twenties. I worked in the Music Industry for ten years and that sort of thing was occasionally expected. Though it did usually take some form of chemical encouragement to get me to move from leaning against bars trying, and probably failing, to look cool.
Thanks Panda.
Yep, similarly insomniacal here, due a brain that never shuts up and a bloodstream that's about 90% caffeine and nicotine.
I shall go and have a look at The Rough House while trying to batter myself into consciousness with a espresso so strong it would give a rhinocerous palpitations.
julia volkova.
No.
Side note:
So, I am watching TV. I keep seeing these commercials where this bossy, cute redhead is butting into conversations and peoples lives. It's starts to annoy me, then I realize who she is supposed to be in said commercials.
.
The real life Wendy