Bedtime Story Conservatory 41 06/05/2020
Hello all!
Quick warning: This email mentions drug abuse, and the reading includes brief description of an eating disorder.
This project is now 40! That's around the average international life expectancy in the 19th century. I hope you all have had a good day today. I've realised how much I rely on others for clarity, and doing this mailing list is giving me that clarity, connection and confidence. So thank you. I hope it gives you some sort of clarity for the moment in which you read this, or listen to the reading.
For the first part of this email, I would like to include this reading I found yesterday, a collaboration between William S. Burroughs and Kurt Cobain, entitled The "Priest" They Called Him. Burroughs reads a short story of his, revolving around the experiences of a heroin addict, whilst Cobain provides crazed guitar playing.
Burroughs was a writer of the Beat generation, who's work is permeated by his experiences with drug addiction, alongside other various encounters. Burroughs was an idol of Cobain's, who was of course the lead singer of Nirvana (ctrl+click pic for link)-
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For the second part of this email, i'm excited to read a short story by an artist and close friend from Essex, UK, Amy Begent, who I studied with back at home at Loughborough University. The following is a brief statement describing Amy and her work:
Over the past two years of university Amy has focused on queer experience within her practice, though more recently she’s begun to explore this through the relationship she has with her dad. Much of Amy’s life, queer or not, has found her dad to be a central figure, so her final project for her BA will be a stop motion animation driven by portrayals of memories and a narration.
Besides the themes of sexuality and relationships, the work also encompasses the theme of nostalgia - The artist utilises materials and processes with sentimental value to create the miniature sets and puppets with a nostalgic air, and use colour and pattern to make a stylistic reference to the 70s (when stop motion animation became so prominent). It’s all very cute and fun!!
The text which I am reading today will be the narration for the animation mentioned above. The story does not have a title. The narration is touching, and warm. I hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoyed reading it.
Here is a link to the reading-
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1U79Kl1Z5AnPKciNdtJlUuZXaRBNoJHhk
And here is a link to all previous readings-
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1t4v042zpGgwI7KN6_ST_tAthqm63J22V
Warm wishes, and warm love,
Sam
