Saturday, March 5, 2016

Prologue to the unfinished sequel to the Bubble Blower



This piece originally served as a prologue to the second book, The Trout’s Road, which I wrote a good portion of but has since been relegated to the bottom drawer. Enjoy?

Jason Rooke felt he had a responsibility.

The past had been parcelled out among the realms. What history did not serve their end goals, the Bubble Blower had either imprisoned or the Hands had buried. But there in his possession was his father’s book, Science and Rationalism of the Hands.

Perhaps with the aid of the book and with the knowledge he had attained in his travels he could give history back to the citizens of Tapestry. Awaken them to the cold hard facts.

There was no taking an objective viewpoint. Neutrality was only a further betrayal in light of everything he now knew. He wanted to talk to the Hands, discover their secrets, show them how their governing had affected the citizens of Tapestry, and how history had stopped being made.

Only everything he knew was in his head, and in his sketchbook. His father’s book was only a fragment of history, not really a foundation to start building something on. He wondered if he was thinking well above his station.

The book was one in a series, perhaps not even the first volume. How much it covered exactly, he could not tell. He opened it up and began to read on.

So we have, as a response to the event that we now know simply as ‘the disordering’, the appropriation of entirely new methods of division, organisation, and control. These methods are characterised by the development of individuals with concern to their environments.

Tapestry has a rich and diverse history, an inheritance that will soon be divided. It is a spiritual nation where its inhabitants have always desired to live together and be regarded collectively. The emergence of these new methods I fear will lead us to a Tapestry that will in time be unrecognisable to the one we once knew.

I will consider the implications of the planned realms I mentioned earlier, which are by far the most important instance of these new methods in motion. I would like to demonstrate how the realms will be fashioned and what impact they will have for us as a nation. Also, with the form of abduction, I will attempt to make sense of the Hands and their governing.

The truth about what the disordering was and what had caused it had been concealed by the Hands. They self-diagnosed themselves with amnesia. His father knew little about the disordering other than what he discovered through his suspicions.

I believe their explanation for the disordering was little more than a guess; a hypothetical one, founded on insufficient observation and evidence. They managed to abduct a single explanation for its cause while disregarding any alternative possibilities.
In mathematics, it is known that 2 + 2 = 4, but the answer can also be a 5 since the Hands can will anything into existence.

The disordering was the reason for the realms. He didn’t need to read his father’s book to know that. Disappointment set in then when he realised the book contained no satisfying answers. There was still so much being kept back. His only choice was to go to Machine - the city of the Hands. Where he could access the archives, find the whereabouts of his friend Augustus, and hopefully obtain all the answers to his questions.

Jason Rooke felt he had a responsibility.

Monday, February 2, 2015

INHERENT VICE

 
"Turn on, tune in, drop out," is a distant echo, now it's all, "go away little hippie." In society's blood-shot gaze the free-love generation spawned a parasitic organism, and chances of mutualism are a distant memory. The fact is, spiritual liberationsim has given way to post-Manson malaise. It's the end of an era. Deteriation with a pulse.

Friday, September 5, 2014

My first full-length novel

illustration by
The idea for the novel came about in early 2012, some time after finishing my creative writing course. I wanted to write a 'psychedelic' fantasy with a unique concept that was thematically rich.

So, what's it about? Well, without giving too much away...

The story chronicles the adventures of a young man named Jason Rooke, who after running away from his hometown to avoid siphoning, is left aimlesss and vulnerable in a world he knows little about.

When a friend of his father’s, Augustus Shade, entrusts him with a rare map, he goes on a quest to find the Bubble Blower, a mysterious character he believes might hold all the answers.

In his encounters with the people of Foxcote and Temperance, he learns the importance of friendship, and human morality. But the tension caused by his dealings with the towns begins to build and with it the true relationship between power and knowledge is revealed...


http://www.amazon.co.uk/BUBBLE-BLOWER-Ashley-Russell-ebook/dp/B00K56V1TS/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1409931456&sr=8-1&keywords=the+bubble+blower

Monday, September 1, 2014

Barcelona, Wu-Tang wisdom & cognitive maps

Last month my girlfriend and I went to Barcelona. We covered a lot of it by foot. When I'm in a place/city I like to be able to memorize its geography. I have realised that one of my abilities is forming a strong, reliable cognitive map of my surroundings.

This reminded me of something the RZA wrote about in his book, THE TAO OF WU, where he made reference to a British study about cab drivers in London who by 'mastering the streets in that city, they actually increased the size and changed the structure of their brains.' This enlarged 'the hippocampi - which is part of the brain that handles memory.' He makes a good point that practicting this gives 'a sense of perspective-of the size of the world, the scale of the universe, the place of man.' 

Monday, July 14, 2014

Inspired to write this after watching the film BRICK (2005)




Brendan Frye’s on a case. He’s aggravating existing conflicts, drawing people out into the open despite being conditioned to small places. In his composure and his words he makes Dashiell Hammett’s hard-boiled world three dimensional, whose immortality is now his mortality. He can touch the sadness everywhere. School yard and athletic field draped in silence under a grey and scratched sky. His mind is like spools, between which his memories of her pass and wind. He presses play, his memory moves in one direction, while life moves in the other. He presses stop, and he flips it, plays the other side…back and forth until the tape threatens to feed noise and snap. This case is the most personal. It’s the one that threatens to expose him. Shadows murmur and hum. Dreams are held together with only invented textures and instruments. It’s his need to find out that keeps him ticking. He decided at the start, this case is no different to a Rubik’s Cube. It's no easy pickings but it’s not insoluble. Its nature can be learned. Algorithms can be made of it just the same. He just needs to keep all five senses. Get just enough sleep.