Wondermentalist

I’ve had chronic computer trouble and I’m writing this from the Apple store in Exeter’s Princesshay while a Genius (sic) does an erase and install on my iBook. That’s why I’m slow off the mark writing up our night at the Phoenix. But Liv Torc just phoned and told me that the Express and Echo have beaten me to it and given us a cracking review. When you read it you’ll see why she was happy about it…

I’ll cut and paste it below for those who are, quite rightly, suspicious of embedded links. While I’m at it I’ll chip in, for the record, that Beryl the Feral, Bill Greenwell and Nomad Shuffle were brilliant too.

INSPIRATIONAL PHOENIX NIGHT

11:40 - 09 July 2008

“I have enough, I do enough, I am enough,” were the stark words of Exeter performance poet Liv Torc giving the two fingers to modern life at the humorous cabaret Wondermentalist.Her set was one of the highlights of the poetry, comedy and music night hosted by Devon-based Radio 4 poet Matt Harvey in conjunction with Exeter College.Torc’s ‘Living TV’ celebrates the lives of the enviable ‘have-enoughs’, such as size-14 Beverly who unapologetically eats saturated fat and caravan owner George who prefers buying Frank Zappa albums to a proper house. They were just two of the evening’s funniest and most endearing characters created and brought to life by some of the county’s brightest poetic talent.Making a hilarious appearance was Harvey’s famous superhero alter ego ‘Empath Man’ who “took part in a drugs trial that went horribly wrong - it was for an anti-pessimism drug, called Optiagra, for middle-aged men who find it difficult to get their hopes up.”

Harvey could have been describing one of the evening’s funniest performers, Jerri Hart, who is “single by choice, but not his choice”. Probably better-known to Exeter residents as a jazz busker in Princesshay, Hart had the audience laughing incredulously at his weird but hilarious jazz knitting and just plain silly origami scat.

Exeter College lecturers passionately championed their favourite writers in the Dead Poets Slam, cheered on encouragingly by English literature students in the crowd. Finally the audience participation poem pushed the people of Exeter to reach deep into their creative vegetable juices - each writing a line to describe their feelings on aubergines. A hilarious, moving, inspiring night.

I’m doing Saturday Live tomorrow. I’ve already written my topical poem ( - at the start of the programme the poet of the day reads a short verse about anything in the news that takes their fancy.) To be honest topicality doesn’t come naturally to me and I ask my nearest and dearest ‘What’s topical? What’s topical?’ with increasingly irritating frequency. Yesterday I appended the question to an e-mail to Elvis McGonagall and he write back: ‘Kylie picked up an OBE’. That was enough for me. Better than the credit crunch, the price of oil or Brangelina’s imminent caesarian. So I wrote a quick Kylie poem and now I don’t know if I dare read it. Do you want to hear it? That’s a rhetorical question, obviously.  

A bit of froth for Kylie

She popped to the Palace for her OBE

 – The Order of the Bubbly Elf –

She’s been plucky, plucky, plucky

(And we’re glad she’s got her health)

 Yes. That was it. Tell me, honestly - no, really, I need to know your opinion, for what it’s worth, what do you think? Should I read it? Or should I do the sensible mature thing and step back to the drawing board while there’s still time…? 

I thought the blog would like to know what a typical Wondermentalist mail-out looks like. And in the process tell you about forthcoming attractions. If you’d like to receive the mail-out then mail me at matt.harvey@copperstrings.com and say, “I’d like to be on the wondermentamailing list.” Then leave it with me…

Greetings and welcome to the Wondermentalist June mail-out

Why the wondermentamailout when there’s no June Wondermentalist? Because there are two in July, in Exeter and Dartington.  And because you have a right to know. A hunger, even. You may be experiencing wonder pangs – it can happen. Also because I want to tell you about podcasts, about Copperwires and your chance to contribute to a bicycle poem, and about my own appearance at the Consciousness Café in the Barrel House, Totnes, on June 26th.

On July 5th Wondermentalist goes to the Phoenix in Exeter (01392 667080), upstairs in the Voodoo Lounge. Bill Greenwell will be there, Jerri and I will do a bit more than usual, Nomad Shuffle will achieve intermediate gorgeousness and we’ll hear from Liv Torc and Beryl the Feral. All the Dead Poet Slammers will be lecturers from Exeter College. It’ll be fantastic and we hope it’ll become an annual Phoenix event. Nevertheless it’s along way for our regulars to go and frankly we don’t expect you to, unless you live in the vicinity.

We hope you’ll come to Ways With Words (01803 867373) on Monday 14th July in the Great Hall, Dartington. Here our Dead Poet Slammers will be provided by folk from the Ways With Words writers roster (see the brochure for who’s around at that time…), which will be fascinating and rather exciting. There’ll be cameos from Beryl the Feral, John Elliott and Mim Darlington, advanced loveliness from Nomad Shuffle and once again a bit more Jerri Hart and myself. I’m anticipating the audience poem will reach new heights. You never know.

Talking of collaborative poems… You’ve probably noticed from the programmes (have you?) that Wondermentalist is but part of a wide network of sites including a social network, CopperStrings, and a podcast place, Traydio. This network of sites has its own newsletter, CopperWires that you can subscribe to (as I do, obviously) which is running its equivalent of our audience poem interactive arts phenomenon. The theme is Bicycles. You get to it by clicking here.

After every wondermentalist there is someone who tells me that his or her line was cruelly, mistakenly, wrongly left out of the audience poem. I commiserate with such people in a cursory way, shrug eloquently by way of acknowledgement of the crumbliness of cookies everywhere, and get on with my life. Now you have chance to put things right. You can contribute to a bicycle poem. I promise, unless it breaks the unwritten laws of decency (and even then it’s 50/50) your line will be included. It will be published all over the place and probably read live at Wondermentalist. From there stardom is but a short step away. Trust me.

I promised a podcast. Paul Wetton has put together The Newer Improved Matt Harvey (also featuring Nathan Filer and Elvis McGonagall) which you get to just by clicking on it. It’s an embedded link. If podcasts are the new radio, embedded links are the new conversation. Marvellous, isn’t it?

Finally I just wanted to tell you that I’m speaking (and reading, a little) at the Consciousness Café in the Barrel House, Totnes, on June 26th. Consciousness Café is a regular discussion group with an invited speaker who talks for half an hour or so before it moves into a group discussion. I’ve been invited to offer thoughts on “A Poet’s Consciousness”. It’s quite a poser – and that’s what I shall probably feel like, standing there and speaking as if I have an iota of a hint of a clue. Nevertheless, I’ll be making as good a fist of it as I can. And probably enlarging on what may or not be meant by Wondermentalism. Come and join in the discussion, or simply listen to the sound of one man floundering…

Hope to see you at one (or two) of the above. The wondermental things apply.

hugs, kisses and manly handshakes

Matt

Blessed Bum - Strange Phenomenon - My Arse!

Topless thinking and wondermentalism don’t necessarily suggest either rejection or acceptance of strange and ‘fringe’ phenomona, nor a preoccupation with wonders and portents. Nevertheless when strange things occur within our orbit we do well to take note and pass comment. The following strangeness would have passed unnoticed were it not for a message from AF Harrold, celebrated poet (who we’ll one day get to Wondermentalist):

Hi Matt,

I assume there’s only one Matthew Harvey in Totnes… in which case I’ve just read about your curious chair-print. How peculiar.

Just thought I’d let you know.

And of course, if there are several Matt Harveys in Totnes and you don’t know what I’m talking about, then that’s a strange coincidence that someone should write to the Fortean Times about…

Cheerio,

Ashley x

Which led to these exchanges:

Hi Ashley,

I *think* I’m the only Matthew Harvey in the TQ9 postcode area, but it’s so hard to be sure of anything, really. A long time ago I wrote to the FT about my interesting chair-print, I was a subscriber at the time. I never saw it in the mag, I’d always assumed it was binned. Did you see it online, or in an old copy?

I’d love to know

Matt x

Hi Ashley, it’s a week later and I’m still curious and baffled as to where/how you came across the curious chair print. Please put me out of my mystery…

Mx

Hi Matt,

Sorry – I didn’t see your first reply… I wasn’t keeping you in suspense on purpose.

Well, the easy answer is your letter and pictures were in this month’s issue (I’m still a subscriber) – it mentioned nothing about them having sat on the letter for years…!

Go out and buy a copy now - it’s the one with a hippy alchemist chap on the cover.

AF x

Thanks Ashley, I’ll go out and buy a copy. I’m amazed they’ve sat on it this long, I’ve worked out it must be at least seven years since I sent it in, maybe more like nine or ten.

The really weird thing is, when you told me it was in the latest issue, my statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary started smirking…

God’s honest truth

Matt x

So, I went out and bought a copy of Fortean Times – the one with a hippy alchemist chap on the cover. And there, to my delight, was a snapshot I’d taken some ten years ago with an accompanying letter written not long after. Here are the photos (scanned from the magazine) and here is the accompanying letter. It appeared in the It Happened To Me section under the heading: Blessed Bum
   “The strange image shown above appeared on a canvas chair in our kitchen in April 1997. neither the bottom for the jeans were an obvious match for anyone in our household nad we were at a loss to explain it. Friends dubbed it “the arse-rubbing of Totnes” and it became something of a magnet, a shrine almost, for people fascinated by the unexplained. Comparisons with the Turin Shroud – though absurd – were inevitable, and people were not slow to theorise. Hypotheses ranged from the far-fetched (“The chair is haunted by the bottom of a former user”) to the even further-fetched (“A burglar suffering from ‘bottom dandruff’broke in,, sat in the chair, and left without stealing anything”).

A local healer suggested that “just as crop circles are a message from planet Earth to its out-of-touch, brain-limited antennae – humans – so might the ‘rubbing’ be a message from the root or base chakra, represented by the bottom, to the airy ‘heady’ atmosphere of our home, exhorting us to become more in touch with the processes of nature, of the body, of the material world.” Could be – it’s a s good a theory as any. Sneerers and sceptics suggested that someone in the house dusted his or her bottom with flour or talcum powder and then sat in the chair – but both of us swore this wasn’t so and, more tellingly, all efforts to replicate the image in this way failed.

Opinions varied as to the gender of the bottom. Most men tended to see it as female, while most women tended to see it as male. We allowed people to sit on the ‘rubbing’ for a small fee and had some surprising feedback. Reports of relief from minor ailments were not uncommon. These included rashes, runny nose, tickly throat, sore wrist etc. – all of which might have cleared up on their own. Less numerous but nonetheless regular were claims, subsequent to sitting on the rubbing, of significant weight loss from hips and thighs. One individual reported spontaneous remission of haemorrhoids; a majority reported feelings of increased wellbeing, clarity of purpose and internal security.

I must confess to having experienced none of these benefits myself and make no claims whatsoever for the image – save that I found it aesthetically pleasing, an interesting talking point and small but welcome source of revenue. I’d be interested to know if anyone else has encountered similar images or if they can come up with any more satisfying and feasible theories than those given above.”

If it hadn’t been for the attentiveness of AF Harrold I’d never have known. We must get him to the Wondermentalist.