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Apparently I'm walking to Mordor...
…with S…
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John Green's "Top Five Movies I Enjoy Watching"
(a list that can be found in this FIFA video)
5. The Sting - “The great con man grifter...
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It seems very strange to reblog someone reblogging me, but people have asked me to, as when I answer questions directly, as I did here, on Tumblr...
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“Lyndon, do you know what the meaning of life is?”
“I’ve got an idea of what makes me happy mate, but I don’t think anyone knows the meaning of life, do they?”
“I do. It’s Chinese Checkers. And grapes.”
Whenever one of the students says something like this to me - something wild and surreal and impossibly funny - I write it down. Now I’ve got pages and pages of these hilarious anecdotes, some of which I could easily explain to you, like the Grade 2 who was mortified to find when playing a (very uniquely ruled) game of chess that his king had been taken, before he yelled triumphantly “OH YEAH? WELL I’VE STILL GOT ALL MY PRAWNS LEFT”; and some of which I could never paint a funny enough picture with words, like the two grade 4/5 girls doing their impersonation of The Voice, and slamming their desks to spin around on their chairs with huge dorky grins on their faces.
I have my suspicions that the kids have spotted me writing these things down, and sometimes - to their teacher’s frustration - are deliberately hamming up their behaviour because they know it gets my attention. But as a visiting writer I can’t help but get sucked in to these performances. While I’m here, these are my characters. And who could resist dialogue like this?
“I know! We should all get guns and shoot all the parents, and then we could take over the town!”
“I don’t know that I could shoot my parents. Could you?”
“Well they only gave me half a piece of toast this morning, so yeah…”
“…What I’d need is an army of me. Like, a million mes.”
“What would you feed them all?”
A pause.
“I suppose they’d have to be cannibals.”
It’s no wonder that shows like Kid’s Say The Darndest Things can survive as long as they have with little more in the way of content than children just talking. Kids see the world in a way that socialised adults have long forgotten how to comprehend. I’ve now started my first classes in the secondary area of the school, and while the comedy is different here - devious, organised, and more challenging to authority - the comments are no less funny. When the 9’s and 10’s were told that as a “special treat” they could sit on the floor to work if they wanted, they exploded into sarcastic cheering and adoration. One boy cried out: ”Oh Miss, thanks so much! That’s the best treat EVER!”
It would be tempting to think that the teachers are desensitised to this, with their chiding comments about ‘behaviour’ and ‘maturity’, but actually I suspect just the opposite. You can hear them occasionally turn phrases and comments that have been picked up from their students in everyday conversation, and the staffroom itself is not vastly different from the wider schoolyard - it is a playground of its own, and the stories that turn up there are no less dramatic or amusing. It’s been interesting to discover this side of St. Helens. I remember when I was at school that even the worst teachers seemed like figures of infallibility. I couldn’t imagine any of them with a life outside of the classroom walls - let alone homes, friends, families and the occasional hangover. But now that I’ve had a chance to sit, observe, and watch everyone in the school more closely, I realise that all of them have a part to play in its story.
The vision statement for St Helens is to be “a supportive community where learning flourishes, confidence grows, and difference is valued.” I love this statement, because I think that it’s actually acted upon here. These are no cookie-cutter children, and individuality is not stamped out of them in the name of obedience and simplified learning. They are who they are.
And as I fill up another page of my notebook with the scribble: “The thing me and tortoises have in common is that once we lie on our backs we can’t get up again”, I realise that simply being allowed to be themselves is exactly what makes them worth listening to.
AIR2012 is an artist in residence program developed and managed by arts@work in partnership with the Australia Council for the Arts. You can find out more about the program here.
Letters of Note collects Stephen Fry’s remarkable letter to a young fan suffering from depression.
This article by Colin Nissan on McSweeney’s, is both incredibly funny and incredibly true:
Mark Twain once said, “Show, don’t tell.” This is an incredibly important lesson for writers to remember; never get such a giant head that you feel entitled to throw around obscure phrases like “Show, don’t tell.” Thanks for nothing, Mr. Cryptic.
I’ve been attending all the K-5 assemblies while I’ve been in my residency at St. Helens, to give me a chance to look at what the kids are doing, and to celebrate their achievements with them. In these assemblies the teachers give out a couple of certificates to students who cannot be awarded academically. I suppose you might call them ‘citizenship awards’, usually for un-instructed kindnesses of one kind or another.
I decided at the most recent assembly that I would hand out a couple of awards myself, to celebrate the efforts of two boys who had really stepped out of their shells during the program, and – regardless of quality – had worked really hard to produce something in the short time that I had with them.
But I didn’t want to just hand them an arbitrary piece of paper. It had to be unique: ‘Artist in Residence’ style. So I wrote both boys a poem each, drawing cartoons around the edges, and signing both of them with a dedication. The poems suited the boy’s interests. One had written a story about a dragon war, so he got a poem which imagined him as King of the dragons, struggling to train a dragon who will not fly straight. The other boy was well known in the school for calling everything ‘epic’. When I had him in a group one day I told him that I had been working with the Grade 2s, and he said: “Oh man! Grade 2 was epic!” I cannot know for sure that his Grade 2 was not vastly different from mine, but I am pretty confident it wasn’t THAT different. The Lord of the Rings is epic. Grade 2 is not epic. Knowing his fondness for the word, however, I wrote him an ‘Epic Poem’, which I am told contains no less than eighteen uses of the word ‘epic’, beginning:
“There was an epic boy,
Who kicked an epic ball,
And didn’t see the epic robots,
In the epic hall…”
These were really treasured by the boys, and were fawned over and coveted by their classmates. One of them said goodbye to me at the end of the day clutching his to his chest, and it was a real highlight of the residency to see this self-identified maths boy take so much pleasure in something from outside his discipline. My only regret is that I can’t do it for every student, though they’d certainly like me to try. At the end of the day several students attempted to force me into story-producing slavery like Kathy Bates in Misery, even going so far as to try to give me ideas for the poems that they wanted. One boy got on his knees.
I don’t have any doubts, but if I ever did have any doubts about whether my role at St. Helens is meaningful, important, or successful, I need only picture that young boy, holding his cap out like Oliver Twist’s bowl, and blocking my path out of the school, eyes wide, yelling:
“I’m begging you, Lyndon! I’m BEGGING YOU! Please! I just want a story!”
A.I.R is an initiative of arts@work. You can find out more about the program here.
When Andrew Slack finished the Harry Potter books he felt, like most of us, a little disappointed. Not because the story was bad, but because it was kind of awesome. And now suddenly it was over, and all that magic was gone from his life. Why couldn’t the real world be more like Harry’s, with forces of evil and darkness to be overcome? Why couldn’t we be in Dumbledore’s Army too, fighting for our schools and friends and values?
Following this line of thought, he realised pretty quickly that actually there was no reason. After all, weren’t depression, illiteracy, climate change and child slavery some of our own, equally evil dark forces? Why couldn’t we form an army against them? The Harry Potter Alliance was born.
For me the H.P.A has an advantage over other charities because its members share something more than a cause. They also share a passion. As the planes that the Alliance sent to Haiti were loaded with food and supplies, each had a name: Harry, Hermione, Ron. It was more than just a victory for charity and goodwill, it was a victory for one of literature’s greatest heroes. As you guys might remember from my Walk To Mordor Fitness Challenge, I’m really interested this year in the point where books stop being books and become something bigger. As such, I’m fascinated by the H.P.A.
So I offered to take charge of their movement in Tasmania.
If you want to do some good in the world, the H.P.A is a great place to start. What has really impressed me about joining their ranks is the way that they use their organisation as a piggy-back to give you the launch from book fan to activist. I was appalled when I heard about SOPA being put forward in the U.S. but I didn’t know what to do, or even if I could do anything at all. The H.P.A showed me how I could add my name to the list of those in opposition. At the moment they are about to start a Hunger Games campaign called ‘Imagine Better’ which will encourage fans of Suzanne Collins’ books to support charities like Oxfam who are working towards fighting issues such as water scarcity and the disempowerment of women. The theory that fans of books care deeply about the message in those books is spreading. And it’s making a real difference.
So what can you do? Well, it wouldn’t hurt to watch Andrew Slack’s presentation at TEDx about why he started the Alliance. Importantly though, your first step would be to join my Dumbledore’s Army Tasmania (DATAS) Facebook page (you do not have to be Tasmanian to join!). I’m keeping that updated with everything I hear, so it’s the best place to keep in the loop. DATAS is still in its infancy, and from here its goals are largely what you guys want. If you want to meet up in person, we’ll do it. If you want to hold events, fundraisers and charity drives, we’ll do that. If it’s more online activism that interests then we can do that too. I only ask that you get excited about it. And tell your friends!
Welcome to the Harry Potter Alliance. Let’s go fight the evils that no-one else will name.
I can still remember my first experience of Charles Dickens. I was at the Palladium Theatre in London, aged 5, about to see my first ever live theatre show. It was a massive revival for the musical Oliver! which had been out of circulation since 1983, and was being brought back in grand style and to much acclaim, with a young Sam Mendes as director, and a killer performance by Jonathan Pryce as Fagin.
I was terrified. The show started with its classic opening of “Food, Glorious Food”, but before that there was the thumping and grinding of the workhouse, explosive flashes of thunder and lightning bringing in the musical with a bang. My Dad had placed his jumper between us on the chair’s armrest, and I quickly pulled it over my head, refusing to watch.
Within a minute though, I had peeked just a little over the corner of the neck hole, and I stayed like that for the rest of the nearly two-hour perfomance; just my eyes peering over the top of the jumper, ready to pull it back up, but not ready to look away.
We listened to a tape of that performance all around England, and in the many years that followed. The story of Oliver Twist, in its intense sense of adventure, social justice and characterisation, remains a favourite to this day.
I was hooked on Charles Dickens.
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Fast forward to this morning, and the bi-centenary of Dickens’ birth.
Over the summer I asked mum to keep an eye out for cheap Charles Dickens books at the op-shop. We actually got most of the way there. She would go with friends and trawl the shelves, and I have about ten of his works so far, all in different shapes and sizes, belonging to various sets and decades of publishing.
Then about a week ago we got a call from one of Mum’s friends, who had been trawling through an old shed of her late-husband’s things.
“I’ve got something for Lyndon,” she said.
The picture above is mine, taken of what she has given me. A complete, 26-volume set from the early 1900’s, of Charles Dickens’ complete works. It is simply a beautiful collection, and I am so privileged to have been given it.
Charles Dickens it seems, by providence or luck, has never quite been able to leave me alone. From age five to now, like his Ghost of Christmas Past he haunts me, a comforter and guide in the best of times and the worst of times. Running my fingers along the bevelled edges of this complete set I wonder how different things will be in the world that he has left behind fifty years from now, a hundred years from now, and even many centenaries into the future.
Yet while there is poverty, injustice, and the weak and defenceless fighting to be noticed, it seems unlikely that this impeccable man of letters will ever be far away. While there are still Scrooges, Mr. Bumbles, and Gradgrinds, we will continue to need his stories to comfort and right us.
We still need Charles Dickens. I think perhaps we always will. And for that, God bless him. Happy birthday Charlie D.
This is me, showing my face on YouTube for the very first (but hopefully not the very last) time.
For those of you who have asked about the poem that I took to the National Final of the Australian Poetry Slam, this is it. And I was really scared in Sydney, with a big crowd that I didn’t know, standing on a stage amongst the ghosts of some of Australia’s greatest performances. (A poster out the front explained that both Cate Blanchett and Geoffrey Rush would be back on the stage soon.)
But you know what? It went well. And I’m happy losing to such great and intense competitors. Here is my poem, called ‘Jehovah’s Witnesses’. Hope you like it.
I recently bought a Jawbone UP fitness band, and since buying it I’ve been excited about the idea of doing a fitness challenge for 2012. I thought about trying to walk the equivalent distance from one city to another, or around the world, but then thought: Wouldn’t it be interesting to walk somewhere I could never go in real life?
Within a minute, the Walk To Mordor challenge was cemented into my head. The goal is simple: walk (or run) the equivalent of the entire distance from Hobbiton to Mordor (2224km) before Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit comes out on Boxing Day 2012. The challenge starts tomorrow, Monday the 9th January 2012, and if you can maintain an average of 6.5 kilometres a day, you should get there without any trouble.
To sweeten the deal, I have calculated various landmarks and key events in the novels, and which kilometre of the journey they occur in. So as you go, you can enjoy the precise moment when the fellowship enter the Mines of Moriah, or when Gollum reveals himself and is kidnapped by Sam and Frodo. Using the official hashtag #WalkToMordor, we’ll be able to compare our progress in real-life by following key moments in the books, and, hopefully, encourage each other to make it through.
I’ve written a 7-page guide to my version of Walk To Mordor which will tell you absolutely everything you need to know to join in. You can find that here:
http://dft.ba/-WalkToMordor2012
And I’d love to hear if you’re going to join us! You can contact me through the comments here on Tumblr, and through Twitter or Facebook. The more people we have, the more enjoyable the experience will be, so I do encourage you to give it a go! And feel free to tweak my ideas and make it something that works for you!
If there is one thing to learn from The Lord of the Rings, it is that the road goes ever on and on, and it is company that makes it worthwhile.
Thanks so much for reading, and I hope to hear from you soon that you’ll be participating in 2012’s nerdiest fitness challenge!
On New Year’s Eve I went to the cemetery looking for inspiration. I found more than a hundred characters amongst the tombstones of that afternoon, and I sat and wrote my own biographies for a handful of them. But there was one tombstone which I couldn’t do one for. It had cracked and degraded to the point that it was unreadable now, and yet I liked its character more than any of the named ones, and I was determined to write something to show that it was no lesser.
So I did:
They put me here a long time ago. They buried me deep beneath the earth and they laid a tombstone over me.
They carved my name to save me, but with time it faded away. It cracked and crumbled. What once was fixed caved away into dust, and they let the last fraction of me slide away in the rain.
The Egyptians used to protect their names with a cartouche, a loop of power and preservation. If you could keep your name safe you would live forever. Some still believe that you are alive for as long as your name survives. If this is true then I have lived long, and though I will not live as long as you, the children of the information age, I am just one victim of the fate of darkness that awaits all of us.
I am gone now; no one whispers my name on their breath. I am worse than a ghost. If I were to slip into someone’s room in the black of the night, they would say “who are you?” and I would reply, truthfully, “I do not know.”
At the end I existed only in memory, and now I am forgotten, so I do not exist at all.
But if you pass my grave, do not ignore it. Remember me. Make me up inside your head. I no longer know my sex, but give me one. Give me a name. Give me my life back, in your mind.
And take me with you wherever you go. I will live happily in any form you choose. Carry me in your head and pass me on to others. If you make me and remake me, I will still be no-one, but I will be everyone.
And I will live forever.
