12 Months of Paperthin: May
From under the long shadow of election hope and election horror I have been writing comics.
The novel bubbles away on the back burner of my brain. Simmering. Some of the characters have begun to speak. Aunt Joan. Bird. Eileen. Never Mimi though. She’s only ever seen walking away.
Excerpt: Dreams of Mr. Fetch
Mr. Fetch has lived in my mind for a long time but these are the first scratches of the story as an animated film. Images from it though - the boat, the fields, the wooded scrub behind housing estates, the little yellow raincoats - have been constants since it’s very early iterations.
I ask myself if I want them to be black and white or colour. If the film is 2D or stop motion animation. If the use of films in this story is too much like the folk tales in Murmurs. I worry it will become a gimmick.
I want it anyway.
I like the shape stories within stories make.
When I wasn’t drawing short films I managed to make a wee pilgrimage out to the Moving Image Archive at Kelvin Hall in Glasgow. Writer and archivist Emily Munro gave me a tour. She was incredibly generous with her time and her wisdom and this week I finally began going back through the photos.
Almost immediately Bird began to insert herself into the pictures. I thought about the light and the quiet. The smell of the consoles and the sound of the air vents. Parts of the story emerged from the stacks of paper ephemera and the towers of video transfer equipment. I loved the details I gleaned exploring these rooms.
Of all the ways I have written Bird discovering the films again this is my favorite. There is something subtly monumental about an archive. All these objects, scraps and shadows, patiently lying in wait. Activated only when an interested party looks at them.
My body creaks under the weight of everything we’ve made, seen and recorded.
So many stories waiting to be told.