Pete Hindle

Above: the retro/Victoriana/steampunk video for “Flush”. I like the giga-Victoria.

I’ve been learning to juggle five balls recently. Four balls is pretty boring; essentially, it’s throwing two balls in one hand simultaneously – something that’s hard, but not impossible. Throwing five balls is something other entirely, requiring a serious amount of practice and training. Thankfully, I’ve got the internet to help out.

• http://www.jugglingarchives.com/ is a website devoted to uncovering the history of juggling in Newcastle and area. I didn’t know their was one, but it’s fascinating to browse.
• Boppo’s Number Juggling Notes are an interesting insight into what it takes to juggle more than three balls.
• This is a page of general juggling advice on five balls, from various people. Many paths to the same route, but with a goal like juggling five it’s best to find out as much as possible.
• Juggling goes back a way on the internet, but it’s original usenet group is best accessed via this page on jugglingdb.com. It’s pretty web 1.0, but that’s ok.
• One of the better jugglers dealing with web 2.0 stuff is Luke Barrage, who in addition to being a professional entertainer, also runs a sci-fi book review podcast, and a now-moribund juggling podcast (rss link).

I don’t read all this stuff a lot, because it’s maddening to think about it at the same time as trying to do it. There’s a certain about of mindful meditation, but after a while I’ve just been listening to music. When not throwing balls into the air, I’ve been catching up with my reading or watching movies. It’s not all work work work, y’know.

I’ve been trying to write a blog post about my illness, specifically about the night that I nearly died, for a while now. It’s a story I’ve told to my friends over and over again, and despite it’s grim subject it’s something I can rely upon to have people laughing out loud.

Trying to make that story come alive in writing is something completely different. I don’t know why – maybe I’m just not good enough with written words. But whatever the reason, I just can’t make the story really ‘pop’ when I need it to. Parts of it that are hilarious when spoken out loud come across flat and dull when in a written form, and after a few separate attempts to squeeze it onto a page I’ve given up.

One of the reasons it’s such a fantastic story is that I’ve told it so many times. I now live far away from my friends, and aside from a small number of people I keep in touch with via email and phone calls, I don’t see a lot of people. When I do get back to Newcastle, I usually go on a socialising splurge, trying to fit in seeing as many people as possible. This usually means updating people on why I’ve been away, and/or what’s wrong with me, and why I get so tired now, and to help me do this I fall into a shpeel which rattles through various points of my health failure until I reach the present.

But this shpeel, this story, isn’t really being told in my usual conversational voice. It’s a tale that I tell people, something I share with them, and when it’s finished I stop being a storyteller and talk with them. I like to find out what they’ve been up to in the months that I’ve been away. The storytelling “voice” I use when relating my tale is similar to the written style I use here on my blog – which, again, is not the real me.

The best blogs are blogs that have a focus, like Lee’s printmaking blog, or Mike’s blog about his trip to the birthplace of Russian Anarchy, or Brenda’s blog on her photography practice. Currently, when I blog I have no real focus but to tell an amusing story, and in doing so I’ve let the story-tellers voice become confused with my own when working (and writing) online. I actually get a lot of compliments about my blog, and the style of writing that I’ve used on it, which is really lovely. But I need to try new things.

I’m not sure what those new things are, but I have to stretch myself. Writing in this semi-voice, this tonal range that sounds like me but isn’t quite, is starting to impose limits on the things I can say – and  the things I can’t. So it’s time to change.

Part of an emerging trend of CGI mashup – as computer graphics become good enough that home users can do incredible things, genres become squished together. Click through for the artists blog or videos.

Conan advised that crushing your enemies, seeing them driven before you, and hearing the lamentation of their women was the best thing in life. You can now hear this sage advice as the chorus for the musical version of Conan.

With that in mind, let’s run through some links I’ve found interesting recently:

• Fish stocks are dwindling, reports the New York Times
• Creative workers: ignore anything that makes you consider stopping
• Also, think about getting some alone time, probably offline.
• But before you unplug the internet, check out this vuvuzela concert
• And the round-the-clock sound of vuvuzelas on vuvuzela.fm

I wrote this application for the Platform ’09 live art event back before I knew I was ill, but I was definitely suffering from all of the symptoms that would later see me hospitalised. I checked with a few people I knew, and found out that at least two of the people on the Platform judging panel had a sense of humour, but before I could send it off I found myself taken into hospital. I don’t know if I would have been given a place at the event, but the application, I think, stands by itself as a piece of writing.

Not only am I sure that I shouldn’t really be in Platform this year, I’m also sure that if you were to award/chose me to be in Platform you’d only be getting something along the lines of “Pete Hindle is nebbishly funny in a sarcastic manner about an element of geekdom.” This would suck; not that I’m not funny – far from it, the other day I made somebody laugh by putting on a jumper, and I’m pretty practised at making ladies laugh from the other side of the room by wiggling my eyebrows. But the reason that it would suck is that you’ve commissioned it before, I’ve done it already, and frankly, we’re all a little tired of stuff like that happening.

Hey, since Platform… whenever I did my last thing… nerds have taken off. In fact, you better be nerdy these days, since all the other social niches are pretty much played out, giving us this massive glut of homogenised stylish young people (girls: pretty, boys: dishevelled) who will no doubt be applying to do various things at this event. Hoo-fucking-rah; even the audiences at Platform are pretty darn hot these days, and considering that it’s a live art event (the epitome of niche) that’s saying something. I came to Platform last year with the pretty young girlfriend who broke my heart into a thousand pieces when she dumped me in Berlin, and even she was intimidated by some of the girls in the audience. Which is why I left early to go and drink mojitoes with her rather than stare at performance art.

Because, honestly, drinking with pretty girls is far more fun than performance art.

I was actually drinking with a few pretty girls recently when I made my nerd credentials quite clear. I said I was going to go home and watch Star Trek, at which point they laughed. I pointed out that I was wearing a red bodywarmer, and that I really was going home to watch Star Trek. I think they might have laughed some more at that point, but in a good way. I was, in fact, desperate to get home owing to the side effects of carrying around an ulcer in my stomach area for the past few months, such as not being able to drink and creating evil smelling farts out of my bottom. I’m presumably carrying around this ulcer owing to the stress of not working on my thesis, but I’m not entirely sure that having a useless fine art education and nowhere to display my “skillz” hasn’t also played a part in it.

So, if you really want an evil smelling, post-graduate educated sarcastic asshole who would rather be off drinking with pretty girls than making lame jokes about the puerile obsessions of a set of closeted individuals that value gadgetry and science fiction over personal contact and the real world, I’m your man. I do carry around in my head a few ideas that I might be able to turn into performances, so I thought I’d make a note of them in a list format in case you didn’t read any of the above.

•    The Quaker Performance: everybody sits in a circle and we have a traditional Quaker meeting, where there is silence for an hour. It’ll be awesome, promise.
•    Juggling: possibly with glasses. I can do a three ball cascade for around ten minutes.
•    Dialogue: I talk with the people in the audience, making them the focus of the performance. People will laugh.
•    The Fleetwood Mac Thing: I explain how I was in the unlikely position of having two girlfriends, and how I adopted the Fleetwood Mac album “Rumours” during that period.
•    The Roman Talk: I heart Romans. Did you know that Caligula tried to make his favourite horse a consul of Rome? Romans are comedy gold.
•    Full Lock: Somebody puts a car in the full lock position and does multiple donuts outside the venue. Again: awesome, with the added bonuses of illegality and danger of death.

Obviously, rather than fleshing out any of these ideas you’d be better employing another artist and giving them an opportunity that they’d enjoy. I’d probably find the whole prospect of standing in front of another audience gut-wrenchingly fear inducing and it’s not like I care enough to keep my CV updated anyway.

I used to be seriously into music. Like, seriously spending all my money on CDs, reading about music, and playing instruments. I’ve mentioned a little just how staid my hometown is, but in middle school I was carting around a seriously boring instrument, the Bassoon (if you ever want to kill a kids interest in music, give them a bassoon). That basson was the closest I could get to rock and roll in Bedfordshire, so I dutifully joined the orchestra – and then found that I totally hated the entire orchestra experience.

Later on I would get a guitar, but after years of trying to herd stoned guys into doing something, I jacked it in and concentrated on getting enough qualifications to go to art college. These days my music skills are so rusty that although I can technically play the piano, violin, tabla, guitar, bass, and bassoon, it’s probably more accurate to say I can hold them in the right way to make a noise.

Still, that idea of being a musician still holds some sway. Perhaps I should pick up the cello that my Dad has here, and learn to play it? Surely I could get somewhere good within about six months… good enough to do a Yeah Yeah Yeahs cover, perhaps. Wait, I’ll just google it and see if anybody else is doing that…

Shitnuts.

On the other hand, it looks like nobody is doing Fugazi covers with a bassoon. That could be my big break-through.

Yesterday was a trip into London to meet up with my mother for lunch, and then look at some art galleries and bicycle shops around the Brick Lane area. It was nice to get out of the small town where I usually find myself, but after the bike ride on Tuesday I rapidly became too tired with all the walking that being in the capital entails. I took a train back to Biggleswade, and went to bed early.

Another odd thing about fatigue is that after a certain point of tiredness, it’s hard to get a good nights sleep. During the night I kept waking up with an enormous headache, like somebody battering me with a steel bar. I woke up at six and fixed myself breakfast, before going back to bed for another few hours. That headache is still lingering around, occasionally rubbing up against the left side of my brain.

When I woke up for the second time, the post had brought my appeal against my medical assessment. Apparently, because my original medical assessment didn’t show that I had fatigue I don’t have fatigue. Yeah, and the first rule of tautology club is the first rule of tautology club. Thanks a bunch, whoever was in charge of that.

The good news for the week is that I won’t have to pay to go back to university. Huzzah! Lets do a dance. A predator dance:

Truth

I got lost on my bike today, and ended up doing a fantastically long ride by accident. So instead of writing anything useful I thought I’d share this advert with you…

It’s some sort of Russian translation device that allows Father Christmas to end up knocking boots and bumping uglies with people. Obviously, Father Christmas doesn’t need to translate “до бит” or “Могу ли я на вершине?” when in the bedroom. Also of note is the way it puts our puny iPhones to shame with its ability to instantly translate seductive murmurings. Perhaps it has a special “smooth talking” mode to help with chatting up people, although it would be terribly embarrassing if it got stuck in that mode when you are trying to hold a business meeting (“Darling, after the merger I’m going to make half your staff redundant. Because you’re so sexy!”).

If you are interested in this device, try giving those UK numbers a call. I have no connection to the object, and I wish all the best to those flogging it.

In a recent article for the Guardian, Charlie Brooker wrote this about the 13-year interregnum between Tory governments:

“…an entire generation grew up regarding the Tory government as something like rain, or wasps, or stomach flu: an unavoidable, undying source of dismay.

Until 1997, when they were eradicated overnight. It was as if scientists had suddenly discovered a cure for the common cold. A permanent millstone – gone! The initial glow of jubilation never completely faded. For years afterwards, simply knowing the Conservatives weren’t in power left me mildly delighted on a daily basis.”

I felt the same way about waking up somewhere that wasn’t Bedfordshire, and being back here again is no thrill. To give you a taste of what you are probably missing, Bedfordshire’s most sophisticated town is Luton, home to the ultra-right EDL, and the quickest way to start a fight in Biggeswade’s town centre is to call somebody gay. Or to say that they called you gay.

I’m pretty sure that “Mate, I’m cisgender” isn’t going to cut it as a retort, and anyway, these days I find it difficult to deal with more than a thimbleful of wine. So I’ve been avoiding the town centre, and occasionally voyaging out into the countryside on my bike. Such as it is.

Apart from the occasional glass of ginger wine, the lack of a social life, and the ever-present internet, this is pretty much the same lifestyle I had 13 years ago. Everything I worked for in the interim period has landed me back here, and like Brooker’s millstone of a Conservative government, I’m finding the weight something that drags me down.

Next: something that’s a little bit ‘up’, in this series of essays. Or a filler where I post a funny picture. One of the two.

Wondering how it’s going with my health and general welfare? Here’s the important news in a nutshell:

I will not be given any money from the benefits agency and I will have to pay to go back to university.

I got these two pieces of news today, when I seem to be suffering from one of the worst bouts of fatigue in a long time. Funny thing about fatigue: it sort of sneaks up on you. You can think you’re fine, until you try and make sense of the wardrobe options in B&Q, and then you realise that you’re too tired to move properly and end up in a Cafe Nero in St Neots, licking chocolate tortina from off the wrapper because it’s half term and the manager is at home looking after the kids so some sixth-formers who work there forgot to put anything in the chiller.

Unless I suddenly start to be able to pull money out of my butt, it looks like I’ll be staying in Bedfordshire for a little while longer. Actually, pulling money out of my butt sounds like an updating of fairy gold (or, possibly, a term used in the porn industry). I think we can all guess what magic butt-money turns into at sunrise.