Beauty Secrets of the Martyrs – my peculiar little novella of magic, makeup, crypts, and clownfish – goes out into the world today. Thank you to everyone who’s already pre-ordered the paperback. Help yourself to cake.
My novella of magic, makeup, crypts, and clownfish is now available to pre-order in paperback all over the show.
Get it from Amazon, Foyles, Waterstones, Barnes & Noble, or scare the living daylights out of your local bookseller by walking in and actually buying something. Alternatively, get your local library to order it in.
If you end up liking it, it’d be lovely if you left a short review somewhere or told your fantastically-minded friends.
“I just want them to take you seriously.” “Is that possible?”
Drako Oho Zarhazar had seven lives. Having survived two nervous breakdowns, two suicide attempts, and two comas, he was left with a brain so damaged it could no longer record new memories.
In his second coma, he experienced enlightenment in the form of a voice telling him:
TRUST
ABSOLUTE
UNCONDITIONAL
The words were tattooed on his body, along with tribal mandalas and what appears to an enormous celestial ram doing the splits. Born in 1936, Drako lived his last years in a council flat in Brighton where he was a familiar character, sweeping around town in a cape, telling ladies at the bus stop how he was once Salvador Dali’s angel and supplied The Rolling Stones with weed. The aristocratic RP and circus strongman panache might lead you to assume this was a deluded poseur – it’s Brighton, after all – but in Drako’s case, it’s all true.
Toby Amies’ The Man Whose Mind Exploded peeks in on the life of this magnificently peculiar man, his wild past, and surreal, sad twilight years. Drako lived alone, experiencing each day afresh. “Do you remember me?” the filmmaker repeatedly asks. “Not especially, no.” But he was, as he put it, happy to be used. Drako was nothing if not an exhibitionist. Which perhaps you can tell at a glance.
Amies spent four years getting to know Drako, in the disjointed, repetitive way brain damage requires. The distance a filmmaker is meant to keep from his subject is breached from the start, giving the film an intimate edge which makes for high emotional impact. Amies was practically Drako’s carer, urging him – and sometimes pleading him – to take more care while candles burned amongst his toppling stacks of art and scribblings. It was an inferno waiting to happen, but Drako liked it that way.
“I love it all,” he would say, again and again. “The theatre of life.”
This is no pity party, nor would Drako want it to be. He laughed often, spicing up his musings on art and faith with seemingly random instances of surreal filth, simply because he liked it. It’s kind of endearing, once you get used to all the phalluses hanging from his ceiling.
(And there are a lot of phalluses. Just… flocks of cocks. Wow.)
It’s impossible not to love Drako. For all his kinks and his squalor, by the end of the documentary, you hope there will always be people like him, baffling bystanders. Drako was affectionate and friendly and maddeningly stubborn. He lived in the moment, and entirely in his own style. “I love it all.”
Low budget, tender-hearted, and hilarious, The Man Whose Mind Exploded will appeal to fans of Grey Gardens and Marwencol. It’s available to download from iTunes.
On the morning of July the 14th 1789, the people of Paris had had enough. The medieval fortress Bastille, a symbol of the abuses of the monarchy, was stormed by a mob of a thousand men, women, and children. The garrisoned guards, sympathetic to the cause, joined the vainqueurs, helping to free the Bastille’s prisoners (all seven of them, including one chap who thought he was Julius Caeser). Ninety-eight attackers were killed. The Bastille’s governor was beheaded after kicking a pastry cook in the groin. It was the flashpoint of the Revolution, a pivotal moment in Europe’s history.
For Gaetano Polidori – father of The Vampyre‘s John Polidori and grandfather of Dante Gabriel and Christina Rossetti – the rise of the people against the injustices of poverty and monarchy really put a dampener on his morning stroll.
“I was passing by the Palais Royal while the populace were running to assault the fortress; and, having encountered a highly-powdered wig-maker, with a rusty sword raised aloft, I, not expecting any such thing, and hardly conscious of the act, had the sword handed over to me, as he cried aloud—‘Prenez, citoyen, combattez pour la patrie.’ I had no fancy for such an enterprise; so, finding myself sword in hand, I at once cast about for some way to get rid of it; and, bettering my instruction from the man of powder, I stuck it into the hand of the first unarmed person I met; and, repeating, ‘Prenez, citoyen, combattez pour la patrie,’ I passed on and returned home.”
In summary: “Screw you guys, I’m going home.”
As always, at moments of great historical significance, you have bystanders who’d really rather be at home with a cup of tea.
The Rossetti link to the Bastille doesn’t end there. I’ve already blogged about Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s youthful trip to the site of the Battle of Waterloo with fellow Pre-Raphaelite William Holman Hunt. While the battlefield with its meddlesome tour guides left DGR distinctly unimpressed, the site of the Bastille was far more stirring. In October 1849, he wrote home to his brother William:
The other day we walked to the Place de la Bastille. Hunt & Broadie smoked their cigars, while I, in a fine frenzy conjured up by association and historical knowledge, leaned against the Column of July and composed the following sonnet:
How dear the sky has been above this place! Small treasures of this sky that we see here Seen weak through prison-bars from year to year; Eyed with a painful prayer upon God’s grace To save, and tears which stayed along the face Lifted till the sun set. How passing dear At night, when through the bars a wind left clear The skies, and moonlight made a mournful space. This was until one night, the secret kept Safe in low vault and stealthy corridor Was blown abroad on a swift wind of flame. Above God’s sky and God are still the same: It may be that as many tears are shed Beneath, and that man is but as of yore.
As someone who thoroughly enjoyed The Castle of Otranto, you can see how, on balance, Rossetti would prefer the sort of battle that involved ghastly dungeons and the tears of the damned. Revolution, of course, was a cause close to the hearts of the PRB, though perhaps, as this hasty sonnet suggests, it was the sentiment of revolution and not the act itself that lent itself to art.
As it’s the two-hundredth anniversary of the Battle of Waterloo, I thought I’d share this Pre-Raphaelite tidbit from the twenty-one-year-old Dante Gabriel Rossetti.
In the autumn of 1849, he and William Holman Hunt took a holiday to the continent together. Rossetti journaled the experience in verse which he duly sent to his brother, William Michael, back in London. Between sniggering in art galleries and noticing pretty girls (French ones weren’t as nice as English ones, naturally), the PR Brothers took in the usual famous attractions, including the site of the Battle of Waterloo. Here’s what Rossetti thought of it:
On the Field of Waterloo.
So then, the name which travels side by side
With English life from childhood—Waterloo,
Means this. The sun is setting. “Their strife grew
Till the sunset, and ended,” says our guide.
It lacked the “chord” by stage-use sanctified,
Yet I believe one should have thrilled. For me,
I grinned not, and ’twas something:—certainly
These held their point, and did not turn but died:
So much is very well. “Under each span
“Of these ploughed fields” (’tis the guide still) “there rot
Three nations’ slain, a thousand-thousandfold.”
Am I to weep? Good sirs, the earth is old:
Of the whole earth there is no single spot
But hath among its dust the dust of man.
Oh dear. But he does have a point. And then, in a letter to William at home:
One of the great nuisances of this place, as also at Waterloo, is the plague of guides from which there is no escape. The one we had at Waterloo completely baulked me of all the sonnets I had promised myself; so that all I accomplished was the embryo bottled up in the preceding column. Between you and me, William, Waterloo is simply a bore.
This Saturday, the 13th of June 2015, All Saints Church on Jesus Lane will be open to the public from 11.00am to 3.00pm.
Building started on site in 1863 where no former church existed. Instead of a mishmash of different ages like most medieval churches, All Saints is a testament to the vision of one man, George Fredrick Bodley, one of the most significant architects of the Gothic Revival.
With the artistic input from William Morris, Charles Eamer Kempe, Edward Burne-Jones, Ford Maddox Brown, Frederick Leach and Philip Web, there are plenty of stories to tell. Volunteers will be on hand to guide you around the church’s intricate details, including the pre-WW1 graffiti in the chamber to the right of the altar.
Friends of All Saints are always looking for more volunteers. Opportunities include being part of an advisory forum, research, events and fundraising. Email Karen Fishwick for more details: kfishwick@thecct.org.uk
No need to book – just drop in between 11.00am and 3.00pm All Saint’s Church, Jesus Lane, Cambridge, CB5 8BP.
Please contact: southeast@thecct.org.uk or phone 01223 324442 for more information or see visitchurches.org.uk.
My cousin Thomas Holloway was one of the richest self-made men in Victorian Britain. From a humble Cornish childhood in a notorious smugglers’ pub, Thomas built a patent medicine empire known as far away as the pyramids in Giza. He went on to build Holloway College in Surrey and the Holloway Sanatorium for the insane, and amassed a record breaking public collection of Victorian art. Not bad for a man who once languished in debtors’ gaol.
I’m writing The Mighty Healer, a book on Thomas’ life, due for publication by Pen & Sword in 2016. The book looks at the shocking quack medicine trade of the nineteenth century, the fight for women’s education, and the treatment of the mentally ill. It charts Thomas’ spats with Charles Dickens and William Makepeace Thackeray, the inevitable family squabbles over money, and the great legacy he left Britain.
Unfortunately, none of Thomas’ immense fortune trickled down to me. Buying permission to print pictures is an expensive business, and as I have a disabling connective tissue disorder, I don’t currently have a day-job to fund my writing. I need some help. I have sourced a few images royalty free, but three that I can’t do without – including the cover image – are in an archive and need paying for. It would mean a lot to me, and to my future readers, if you could help make The Mighty Healer as visually arresting as possible.
There are small rewards to be had, including an acknowledgement in the completed book.
I haven’t blogged properly for a while, partly because I’m wrapped up in The Mighty Healer, and partly because the boyfriend and I have both been varying shades of ill, ill, ill, for several months. Nothing sucks up time like hospital visits and bedrest.
Here in the UK, the general election is about to topple onto our heads. That means blanket coverage of men in bad suits shouting at each other about the NHS, not because they care that it’s circling the drain, but because winning debates is more fun than losing them. After a while, all the chatter ceases to sound like real life and enters Pink Floyd video territory, particularly when Cameron gets a bit sweaty and you sit there hoping his rubber mask will slither off to reveal the circuitry within.
So I want to share something fun.
Karolyn Gehrig is a queer disabled artist from Los Angeles. Like me, she has a connective tissue disorder and spends a lot of time traipsing in and out of hospital. To pick herself up, Karolyn started taking selfies in a medical setting, tagging them #HospitalGlam.
They’re gorgeous.
“I started posting #hospitalglam because it was frustrating to me that every time I got sicker I’d disappear from my commitments and then feel shy about explaining where I’d been when I knew there was absolutely nothing wrong with pursuing treatment for my disabling chronic illnesses.”
The idea struck a chord. With the success of the #HospitalGlam hashtag on Twitter, Karolyn set up a Tumblr for fellow patients to submit their own selfies, giving them something to do in those doldrum waiting rooms, and winning back a bit of self-esteem at the same time. Any gender, any illness, artistic or silly, made-up or fed up.
oneredbuttonhole @Tumblr
mutantrobot @Tumblr
StormyEnt @Twitter
cripplewife @ Tumblr
Me, modelling the Alien face hugger
annieelainey @Tumblr
One nice effect of #HospitalGlam is finding like-minded souls.
“There are few places where one feels less empowered and beautiful than in a medical setting, and it’s not just because of that awful beige color the walls in doctor’s offices are always painted. Most humans are fortunate to only associate doctors with tedious time spent in waiting rooms and an annual check up. For those of us who are chronically ill, however, the experience of spending as much time as we do in medical settings becomes a spin-cycle of misery, depression, and – often – questioning our own sanity. […] Being disabled in an able-bodied society quickly became a source of shame and frustration.”
Being chronically ill isn’t as glamorous as the brochure made it out to be. The invisibility Karolyn talked about – self-inflicted or otherwise – has an accumulative effect on the psyche. That’s on top of the media’s relentless commodification of the body, where presentability is bound up in youth, health, and unattainable conventional beauty. That’s why it’s so important to see images of people with chronic illnesses and disabilities where a) they’re in control, and b) pity porn, or the godawful ‘inspiration’, doesn’t come into it.
Model Melanie Gaydos will be familiar from Rammstein and Die Antwoord videos. Here, she talks about growing up with Ectodermal Dysplasia and bringing her individuality to the modelling world.
“When I go on a photo shoot, if there’s other industry models there, they normally don’t really know what to make of me. And they’re usually like, ‘What the fuck is this?’ […] I love modelling. A time for me to be completely open. I guess it’s kind of like a therapeutic process for me.”
#HospitalGlam is a weapon for those of us with chronic illnesses. With it, we reassert our individuality, regain our playfulness, and have a ‘frivolous’ place to escape to when all else might seem out of control. It is therapeutic. And it’s fun. And all the while people ask what the fuck, we know it’s needed.
Our Lady of the Cathode Rays. Thine be the free hospital mochas.
2015 is off to a busy start. I’m very pleased to say I’ve been commissioned by Pen & Sword to write a book on Thomas Holloway, my Victorian ancestor, who made his fortune with patented pills and ointments.
It’s due for publication in 2016, so I’ll be spending most of this year poring over material like this…
“I love it all,” he would say, again and again. “The theatre of life.”
