First Review For Foulweather#1

Just got word from Joe, the editor of Paying In Pain that he just reviewed Foulweather #1. Check it out! It is great to see that someone gets what I was trying to do with this project.

Paying In Pain is a rootsy skate zine from Northern California.

Rejection Letter

Art work by Gemma Lewis


This was my first rejection letter for my novel. I thought it was rather nice. Since then I have re-worked some things and considered the suggestions the editor offered me. The publisher is Parthian Books, a Welsh small press that has published a wide range of cutting edge fiction including the book Grits that I mentioned in the previous post. Anyway, I might just send my manuscript back soon with the re-workings.

Dear Pete

Thanks for submitting the extract from your novel, which I have read with enjoyment. The synopsis sounded very interesting & I'm a sneaking fan of surfing. I think you have a strong subject and setting here. The opening section, however, needs to get more immediately into the meat. It meanders rather - especially with the film/fanstasy digression so close to the beginning. There needs to be more of a threat, too, to the protagonist's drifting existence - maybe bring his loss of Marina to the forefront. The location is strong - it needs to be more immediately apparent where that is. You might home in the focus on the protagonist earlier; set up some drama and tension straight away. In your descriptions you have a slight tendency to generalise: specific events/details catch the imagination sooner than a general picture (unless it is a novel of ideas or whatever). Bring the dialogue in sooner; maybe divide what you have into dramatic sections and appraise how much further the action has progressed before continuing to the next one.

I hope this doesn't sound hyper-critical - but because you have potential in your story, I think it's worth working on it a bit more. Better than a bland rejection, I hope. Keep in touch as your writing develops.
Yours with best wishes

Gwen

ps love the email address

A Walk In The Vernacular

McCoy Staircase, Portland Oregon. Photo by Foul Pete


I really enjoy reading literature written in colloquial dialects, especially regional British ones. Writers such as Irvine Welsh and James Kelman do a great job of capturing various Scottish dialects and accents. More recently Niall Griffiths captured the Welsh dialect and other regional British dialects in his book Grits.

A lot of Americans are unfamiliar with a Welsh accent. Mine has been neutralized by years of living in Bahrain and Oregon so I don't have the 'Welshest' of accents. Anyway, inspired by Kelman and Welsh I wrote this a few years ago and put it in my second zine. I know you can't 'read' an accent but I believe it is possible to get some form of sense of it from a written passage. When I wrote this piece I was thinking of the sixteen year olds I was working with before I left Wales. I was a basic skills tutor, teaching basic literacy skills to a group of underprivaliged 'at risk' young males. They were hilarious to work with and gave me no end of shit for being a surfer. This piece was also inspired by the montreal-based rock quintet, Fly Pan Am. There is some ugly language in this, incase you are sensitive to such things.

A Walk In The Vernacular #1
_____________________

there's this piece of music repeatin' ovah an' ovah in me 'ead like. 'kin annoyin it is. some echoey gita. like some cunts sittin in a cave or somethin' twagin' away. then the drums kick in, like marchin' band style like, know what i mean? then the gita ges a bit more complicated like, a bit of variation but still very repetitive ovah and ovah. then it speeds up a bit and ges louda but still very fuckin' repetitive. an' now 'is got me inna groove like. hypnotized me it 'as i tell you. an 'is no longa so annoyin, 'is jus the soundtrack to my walk downa street like. 'kin hell i'm loosin' it mun.
so i'm walkin' downa street like, with this fuckin' spaced out tune in me head. an i'm feelin' all dizzy like 'coz i been up since 'alf past fuckin' two inna mornin' see. i can't sleep propa anymore. i'm up for like three days inna row and then i sleeps for like twenty four fuckin' hours an' then anotha twenty four 'ours. chrissake mun. 'is is gonna kill me 'is is. is like i fugets 'ow ta sleep like. 'is like i lie down an' i'm fuckin knacked an' all but i jus cant fuckin' nod off propa. is tha tune see, it keeps me goin'. it feels like i'm on one a them runnin' machines, a fuckin' treadmill like. like i'm inna a fuckin dome shaped room, like the shape of one a them 3D cinemas like, witha treadmill inna middle an' some footage of the city movin all 'round me. only i'm really out in the streets walkin' but 'is so fuckin' surreal. i feel like the music is suckin' my legs onward and forward onward and forward. marchin' i am thats what i'm doin' i'm fuckin' marchin' like a fuckin' soldja. on to fuckin' war. an the shit i'm seein. 'auntin me fuckin thoughts it is like the echo music in the cave. nothin' makes any bloody sense. and no i'm not on the drugs, thank you very much. pure fuckin' sleep depravation this is, i tell you. maybe i'm walkin' back from war. yeah tha makes more fuckin' sense ta me. i'm so fucked, i musta been inna war somewhere. so the music is tryin' to keep me a marchin' soldja 'coz i just fought a 'ard an bitter war and i don't wanna go on. yeah tha mus be it. maybe i'm onto anotha fuckin' war. 'kin feels like we're at war. not like in the bloody films though. like an invisible war or some bollox like tha. some fuckin' ferocious battle witha hidden enemy. neva endin. day afta day, each time we hit the fuckin streets. jeezuz i should be 'ungry by now. i 'aven't eaten for like a day an a 'alf like. i'm suprised i'm not passin' out right now crossin this fuckin' road. i should be passin' out now to be crushed by this speedin' lorry thas bout to knock me ovah. cunt. i 'aint speedin up fa no fucka. the drums are rollin' now. rollin' and rollin' and the gita is doin' a bit of an angry solo now. still very fuckin' repetitive but reachin' some form of climax or some shit like tha.
so nothin' is makin' sense now nothin' 'cept maybe the fuckin' music inme head, which i think might 'ave always been there like. only i nevah noticed it as much before. i think i'm startin' to like it, like. i think i'll roll me fuckin' sleeves up and get some pace goin'. the things you notice when you are walkin' not drivin'. fuckin' madness mun. fuckin' crazy. all these cunts in theya cars. smokin' fags and waitin' in traffik. what the fuck for mun? where the fuck are they goin' don't they know there's fuckin' war on? i'm gonna march right through this fuckin' buildin' right now. the fuckin' thing is right in me way like. wha the fuck? surely the cunt tha built it knew it was in the way. blocking this particular journey. stupid cunts all of them. 'is a 'kin battlefield. no fuckin' birds sing and all tha crap. like a fuckin' poem. and no birds sing. they've deserted this fuckin' wasteland for betta pastures innit? why the 'ell i still live 'ere i don't know. i should be dead by now. 'ow long now without any kip? i'm fucked. so very fuckin' fucked. i should be fallin' asleep on the pavement beside this pathetic excuse fora tree. i mean what the fuck is a tree doin' groin out of all the concrete? it makes no sense. no fuckin' sense whatsoevah. trees aren't supposed ta grow in tiny patched of earth. look the pavement's crackin'.
so here i am at a junction and i can't decide which way to turn like. which fuckin way do i go now? i know if i was in a green field inna country i wouldn't 'ave this dilema. only inna city is this shit a problem. feels like i'm bein tugged by two opposin' forces. every otha cunt is jus rushin' onwards to fuckin' work or somewhere. why work when we are obviously at war. stupid stupid cunts. pavements crackin' innit. 'neath the pavement - soil an' dirt. earth. roots. real fuckin' things. the gita in me head is screechin' now wailin' fuckin' hurts it does but its nice inna way. like bein' angry is sometimes nice, like. nothin' seems real. nothin' i feel like i'm jus watchin a pointless film. readin' some arty farty pointless book. nothin' is really 'appenin' nothin'. was the point 'ere? only thing thas real is the bloody music inme head, like. nothin outside is real. i mean i see it an' everythin' but i'm nota apart of it. i don't get it. it 'as no meanin' to me. just hypnotises me. fuck i thought it was the music hypnotisin' me. shit. i'm losin' this battle. maybe 'is time to go 'ome an' try an' crash again. was this war all 'bout anyway? i can't fuckin remba why i was fightin' why i'm so fuckin' knacked. if only i could see the cunts. where do they hide? i know theres only a few of the cunts. just so fuckin' good at hidin' they is. good at buildin' huge buildins in my fuckin way 'swell. fuckin cunts. brick by brick, if thas what it takes i fuckin' take 'em down. rip up the road and reveal the muck

Materialism

I would like to think of myself as not being very materialistic. However, when it comes to books and boards, I am a hopeless cause. Here is my current surfboard quiver, from left to right:
a 6'10" Bryan Bates Semi Gun, a 6'9" Al Merrick Single Fin, a 6'4" Bryan Bates Squash Tail Thruster. Both the Bates boards were shapped here in Oregon in Pacific City under his 'Seven' label.

Support local shapers.

In other news, since foulweather #1 is in stores and awaiting reviews, my next project is to re-attack my novel. I'll be posting some blog entries relevant to that very soon.

The foulweather website it also being slowly updated. So check it out from time to time.

Wings Of Desire

A couple of years ago I went through a phase of taking photographs of the sky. However, photographs of the sky can look pretty boring unless you are an exceptional photographer, so I started to frame the sky with trees, buildings and monuments. This is one I took outside Buckingham Palace in London the last time I was there. I’m not really a big fan of London but I do like to pack a backpack with some food and my camera and just jump on the tube and get off at random spots to see what awaits me. So I was out doing that very thing when I thought to myself I hadn’t see Buckingham Palace since I was a child. I decided to go there to try and frame a photograph that captures the farce that is the monarchy. I was hoping to perhaps juxtapose the grandeur of the palace with some tragic/humourous/sad/derpressing/mundane aspect of daily British life. That did not happen. Instead I found the complete opposite, a vision of liberation within the grandiose monument that is the Victoria Memorial. I don’t know much about the memorial, other than that it was to commemorate the memory of Queen Victoria and obviously celebrate Britain’s sordid Imperial past. Much of the horror on the current world stage is a direct result of that era. It is nothing to celebrate. The division of post-colonial Africa and the Middle East has ensured decades worth of conflict and war and will continue to do so. The memorial is little more than a symbol of the wealth of the British ruling elite and the broken backs of the colonies that is was built upon. However, looking up at it and wanting it and everything it represents to melt in the unusual London heat, I was suddenly reminded of one of my favourite films Wings Of Desire by Wim Wenders.

Parts of Wings Of Desire are pretty hard to stomach but the opening scene is perhaps the most awe inspiring thing I have ever seen on film. It is a completely uncut sequence from the perspective of an angel watching down on the human populous of the still divided Berlin. I’m not religious and neither, it seems are Wenders’ angels. They just occupy another plain of existence to us, always have always will. They spend their days dwelling on the tragedy and comedy of the human condition. They follow us around listening to our thoughts. They enter libraries so they can listen to us read. We are a curious puzzle to them but they are content to stay immortal observers, with the exception of one. This angel decides he wants to taste coffee, smoke cigs, see colour, read Shakespeare for himself, fall in love and so on. So he decides to ‘fall.’ There is no explanation as to how, he just ‘falls’ which is great. He is then able to partake in all the joys of being human but as a result also has to suffer all the crap as well, including time and mortality.

I could go on about this film as I have a minor obsession with it. However, one of the greatest aspects of this film for me is a scene that isn’t even in it. My good friend Iain who is Christian who is also obsessed with angels introduced me to it and told me about the angel’s fall. He said the angels are unable to touch humans because if they do, they will ‘fall’ to the lowly status of ‘human being.’ Then one of them falls for a suicidal acrobat, literally. He falls in love with this acrobat and happens upon her one day as she is about to kill herself, so he reaches out to stop her and in consequence becomes human. He made a split second decision to surrender his immortality for this person. That sounded pretty fucking cool to me and so I set out to watch it. It took me about three years to find a copy and to finally realize that this scene never happened. I never could work out how Iain (who is a close reader of books and film) conjured up such a sequence.

Anyway, that was how and why this photo was taken, and because it framed the sky that day perfectly.

Beauty from the filth. Prettiness in the shittiness.

I Leave The Water

i leave the water because
i am cold
i am tired
i am afraid
no other reasons

it is a long and painful drive back to the city

at home i look at the dry crusty salt on my skin and wonder if i should shower


(Alison took the above photo a few summers ago as I was about to snag a few Sunday evening waves after the crowds had gone home)

Novel Illustration

This is what Frank 'Patch' Cubillos came up with as an illustration for the first chapter of my novel. I was pretty honored to have him put the time and effort into this. You can read the first chapter on the foulweather website to see if it is worthy or not.

What If Picasso Surfed?

I recieved an email the other day with an offer to illustrate some of my words. While I was flattered I didn't think too much of it until I checked out the artist's work.

His name is Frank Cubillos. The painting I have posted here is called Santos De Olas. A real cubist interpretation of wave riding.

I recently sent Frank the first chapter of my novel Surrendering To The Undertow for him to illustrate. I can't wait.

In other news the foulweather website has been updated, mainly with more photographs. The site is not complete yet. I need to re-word some things and add some more content but it is getting close. I'll post some of the new photographs on here over the next few days but check out the website anyway. If you like any of the design work, email Kara and tell her so.

FW#1 Gets A Complaint!

I got an email the other day telling me that the first story in FW #1 "pissed me off." I appreciate any and all feedback. But let me just say Max Macias, the author of First Person Colonized is probably going to piss off a few more readers. He is very passionate about the subject matter and it is very personal to him. Provocation is part of the course. Max is a breath of fresh air even if his views are too radical for most people's politics (or lack thereof) and that is why I asked him to write his views on the chosen theme of FW #1.

Check it

FW #1,now available online:

Powell's

Foulweather On The Doorstep

Well they finally arrived. Cheers to Amy at 1984 printing. I tracked the UPS system all morning waiting for the knock at the door. It was pissing rain with howling winds and my porch was soaked. I had to leave before they arrived and was stressed they'd end up drenched but all was OK. I'm pleased with how they turned out. It feels good to have a zine printed professionally for once. I think it will add some cred to the content. Kevin Sampsell, the small press guy at Powell's , already bought ten copies. They should be on the Powell's website within a few days. They are also on consignment at Q is for Choir (SE 26th and Clinton) and Reading Frenzy (SW Oak and 9th) if you live in Portland. I am hoping to meet with Joe from Microcosm soon to see if he wants to distro them also.

The Mythology Of Borders

As I sit here waiting for FW #1 to be delivered it truly is a foul day. There are blizzard warnings in the mountains and there are 13' swells at 8 second intervals out in the ocean with 45 knot winds from the south. I am dreading my bike ride to work but hopefully my back pack will be loaded up with brand new zines.

The collage above was the back cover to the fourth and final issue of Coming To Amerika and one of the reasons I sold out of that issue. It was done by my good friend Jason 'Pumpkin' Powers. He has lots more but this one entitled 'The Mythology of Borders,' seemed to fit the best. Unfortunately, the piss poor quality reproduced here does not do it justice. Jason's work is somewhat reminiscent of Gee Vaucher, Winston Smith and good old Terry Gilliam. I am posting it to say farewell to an old project and hello to a new one. And because foul weather knows no borders. Tenous I know...

Brown Santa Spotted Over San Pablo CA

ETA for foulweather #1 is Weds March the 8th.

Sous Les Paves, La Plage

A trip to Northern California a few weeks ago. Thanks Bob, for driving me to the Ione skatepark.
Photo taken from www.thrashermagazine.com



While the boys were out tucking into good waves up here in Oregon, I had the misfortune to be landlocked for the last four days in the suburban wasteland of Roseville CA. People keep telling me how fortunate I was/am to make Portland my first port of call in this country but I never realized how depressing some parts of this country really are. I felt like an alien down there. No one walks, bikes or skates for transport. Everyone and everywhere looks the same. All your shopping is done in huge chain stores and you get stared at for being a scruffy Euro pikey. One night I just had to tackle it head on. I noticed that these vast wastelands of shopping centers, strip malls, and corporate complexes actually contained some pretty good skateboarding terrain. I hooded up like an urban ninja and hit the streets. It is crazy to think that acres and acres of woodland have become huge parking lots that largely remain unused. They are also patrolled by private security who I had to evade during my midnight attack on the suburban jungle. I have thought this many times over but that night it really struck a chord. Why is it so bad for a skateboarder to use the curbs, rails, planters, stairs in such areas when they are being unused by all the office monkeys and consumer junkies at night? Hundreds of thousands of oak trees must have been cut down to make way for all that asphalt and tarmac, yet when a skateboarder scuffs up the red paint of a curb he/she risks arrest and huge fines. I found an ironic sense of liberation being the only person not in a car shredding through this nightmare terrain. In fact, it felt like a good day of surfing. As if beneath all the uninspired concrete, I was tapping back into the primeval energy that surfing comes from. As they said in France in 1968 “Sous Les Paves, Le plage." Beneath The Paving Stones, The Beach.” That was the battle cry when thousands of students and striking workers battled the police during the '68 Parisian uprisings. They had no weapons to fight the police so they tore up the cobblestone streets to lob at them. Once they tore them up these stones, they discovered underneath was sand, The Beach. The imagery of the beach became a symbol for their liberation and defiance of authority. That is how skateboarding feels sometimes, especially when you are skateboarding in places that are not designated areas for it. As if you are creatively ripping up the urban nightmare to expose what has always lay beneath. It is here that the true connection to skateboarding and surfing can be found. The next day, I caved in and took an hour drive through some beautiful hills up into a small town called Ione. Here I found the bowl pictured above.

The total antithesis of what I had experienced the previous night. While skating that amoeba was skateboarding bliss, it lacked the outlaw sensation of skateboarding through the suburban jungle. And while skateboarding such a bowl might be physically closer to surfing, jamming through the streets taps deeper into the same metaphysical zone as surfing. One day civilization will crumble, and street skaters will aid in its collapse. After, that day we will all be where we all belong, naked on the beach, waiting for waves.

The Brown Santa

I just got word from UPS that foulweather #1 will be leaving Oakland shortly. Soon my basement will be full of zines that I hope I can sell.

foulweather #1 on the horizon

Above is the foulweather logo designed by Kara (My sis in law). It was originally a zine cover for a project I did called 'Coming to Amerika.' I got tired of spelling Amerika with a K for a variety of reasons and decided to scrap it after four zines worth. We tweaked the old logo a bit to come up with the current image. I worry that it looks too phallic but I like it too much to start over.

I am now pleased to announce that the first issue of foulweather will be out very soon. It is currently in a warehouse in Oakland CA awaiting to be bound, packed and shipped up to foulweather's current home in Portland Oregon. I am getting a few hundred copies printed and hope to have them available at several local book shops. All going to plan the zine will be available online also. I'll post the links when that happens.

The loose goal of foulweather is to publish creative nonfiction that combines the personal with the political while providing a few laughs. The theme of issue #1 is neo-colonialism. It seems pretty random but as I was assembling everything together it made complete sense. I was fortunate to have a couple of great contributors who were already working on projects that were tackling this theme. Max Macias, a radical librarian and Saeed Farouky a Palestinian filmmaker wrote a couple of personal essays that question what it means to assume a national identity or subscribe to a particular culture. I wrote a piece on the film The Battle of Algiers, another on cultural imperialism and finally there is the saga of my expatriate existance as a Welsh youth in Bahrain. Confessions of a Guilty Expat is part of a more ambitious project I am working on but more on that at a later date.

In other news, the online literary journal www.smokebox.net is soon to publish a short story I wrote about poo. Look for it in April. It is called Thomas and I.

foulweather: Stairway To Nowhere

foulweather is my little publishing project. I am going to use this blog as an effort to explain what it is, where it came from and where it is going.

I suppose I'll start at the beginning. Swansea, South Wales. "The Graveyard of all ambition" as Dylan Thomas once proclaimed. Dylan Thomas is perhaps Swansea's most famous son but obviously he had an uneasy relationship with the city. Anyway, that is where I'm from. It is where I was born and where I want to end up slowly rotting on the beach, being pecked away by sea birds.

Dylan also described Swansea as a "Pretty Ugly Town." Swansea, as much as it wants to relish in Dylan's celebrity has always been uneasy with his descriptions of it. Consequently, when one walks out of the train station and looks down at their feet, they will find engraved in stone the words, "Ambition is Critical." In the mid 1990s a film called Twin Town was set in Swansea. During one of the opening scenes the lead characters discuss Dylan's description of Swansea while walking over the "Ambition is Critical" engraving. "Lovely Ugly Town?" One asks the other, "More like Pretty Shitty City" is the reply. Anyway, the above photograph was taken the last time I was back. I call it the Stairway To Nowhere. Not very subtle, I know, but sometimes there is no room for subtlety.

Swansea is the end of the line both geographically and metaphorically. The end of the railway tracks and the end of the M4 (well that goes all the way to Carmarthen these days but we'll ignore that detail for now). If you ever drive or catch the train into Swansea about ten miles east you pass by Bagaln Bay and its monstrous industry. At night it looks like some form of dystopian city, with the gas and steel works glowing in unnatural oranges and white, fire and smoke bellowing above the black sea. It looks like a scene from Blade Runner. Not coincidently, Ridley Scott was reading Philip K Dick's Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep, as he once went past Baglan Bay on his way into Swansea or so the story goes. Whats more, Terry Gilliam once stopped in Baglan on his way into Swansea. You see, Monty Python's The Life Of Brian, was actually banned in the City of Swansea and he came into town to defend it. For whatever reason he stopped in Bagaln, perhaps just to walk on the beach. On the beach with the massive cooling towers to his rear, an old man with a stereo walked by as Gilliam looked out to sea. The old man was carrying a radio and on it crackled some distant sounding Brazilian music. Gilliam was so struck by the juxtaposition of the imagery before him that he went round the bend and came back again with this film called Brazil. You may have heard of it. You may even have seen it. If you have you will surely remember the torture scene at the end. Well that is set in the very cooling towers that look out from South Wales into the Bristol Channel and beyond, out to the Atlantic. This is where foulweather came from. Coming and going to Swansea.

Finding prettiness in the shittiness. Beauty in the filth.