Quantum Opinion #1

I was once walking down Sadlergate (more about Sadlergate later) and, I think it was the butcher’s shop that had just closed down and was becoming one of the high-fashion shops (that are now closed down, but more about that later as well), and the ugly eighties plastic hoarding had been ripped out to make way for a new pretty wooden/plaster one. Underneath you could see the old Sadler’s hoarding from god-knows-when-ago, all old tar coloured wood with faded gold letters. Someone’s initials and surname, almost definitely a dealer in some horse related paraphernalia from when the street would have smelt like a hundred horses’ arses, from all the horses arses shitting all over the place as they got their hooves and saddles and whatnot seen to.

It was a kind of Proustian rush back to a time I’ve only seen one faded photo of in a book about old Derby. I go in search for those sights a lot. The bits that have never changed. Even restored building are enough, so that all you have to do is squint to see back to before cars when there were trams, and before trams when there were horses and the roads were soil…

Quantum Opinion #2

Having thought about it all day, I can still say that this is a good idea. But a few things strike me as odd, and these things make the ‘good idea’ come apart at the seams.

Take the previously mentioned Sadlergate. It’s a beautiful street that’s up there in old beauty with York. The shop fronts are all very nicely done up and for the most part the buildings are really well maintained. One thing that strikes you at the moment about these shop fronts though is that they’re empty. There are no shops in them. There are still shops open on Sadlergate, but the ratio of open ones to closed-down ones is getting more even every week. So, if one part of town that already looks nice can’t attract business as it is, how is making another part that doesn’t look as nice look as nice as the one that already looks nice going to attract any more?

By travelling in time, the council are trying to retrace their steps to before they signed off on Westfield building what Charlie Brooker perfectly described as a “hollow, anaesthetising capitalist moonbase”. Business in the actual city centre has been going downhill pretty steadily since the Big Grey Block appeared on the skyline, and will continue to do so until someone pulls it down/blows it up, or better: until businesses reject it for what it is and move back to somewhere with a soul. I’m not ignorant, I know rents are high outside of the moonbase, I know the footfall is less than half that of in there, but venture into the sunlight one by one and see how much better lunchtime is in the market square that in Logan’s Run’s food hall.

So, rather than spending a million on architecture, maybe spend a fraction of that on some consultancy between landlords and businesses. Strike up some deals. Make some introductions. The age of the bricks won’t attract business if the books don’t balance on paper. Fix what you’ve broken before building something new, because going back in time aesthetically is not time travel.

Tonight, QUAD are showing The Time Traveler’s Wife. They contacted us lot at Time Travel Opportunists to put on a night of words to follow a literary adaptation (of which there are a few kicking about at the moment). Now, The Time Traveler’s Wife is looking like it might disappoint a bit, but it’s still about TIME innit, so we’re putting on a night all about time to follow the film that should either extend the enjoyment (if the film is as good as the book that it’s based on) or flood it out (if it’s not) with time themed wonders from the worlds of short films, fiction, and music.

Here’s what the evening is looking like:

WORDS:-
Time Travel Opportunists – me, Nathan Good and Emma Lannie, reading our original fiction.
Dr. Paul Hammond OBE – local actor, entrepreneur and savant shares his theories of time…
MOMO – We’ll be reading selections from Michael Ende’s classic throughout the evening.

FILM:-
‘On Time’ by Ted Chung – an incredible short film made in 24 hours at the 2008 Berlinale Talent Campus.
‘Back To The Future The Musical’ – one-man, one-theme tune. That’s all that needs saying.
‘Chronos’ by Ron Fricke – a visual journey through time (we’ll be playing this ambiently throughout the night)

MUSIC:-
Time themed musical journeys will be spun throughout this merry evening by DJ Emmett L. Brown. Great Scott!

All this is FREE as well. Seeing the film isn’t (it’s the usual price of about five or six quid), but the whole night afterwards is. We’ll start at 8:30pm, after the 6:10pm showing of The Time Traveler’s Wife. Join us. JOIN US.

Recently, the chill autumn air has been accentuated by a breeze blowing down from the arctic. It’s a nice kind of cold. The kind that needs days of darkness and lights in the sky. We’re planning a trip to Iceland in April.

My love of Iceland began with a documentary about northern most Manitoba. That sealed the idea of ‘wilderness’ into my brain as something to be experienced. I still feel that. At about the same time, aged seventeen (and in the early hours of the morning, on channel 4), I saw a troupe of dancers dressed as angels dancing in slow motion to the most beautiful music I thought I’d ever heard. That was the video to ‘Svefn-g-englar’ as part of a 4music fifteen minute expo of Sigur Ros. Ever since, I’ve been seeking out and collecting Icelandic music.

It feels good to know that you will soon experience something you’ve been preparing yourself for for eight years.

Derby is my home. I feel attached to it, not by sentiment (although that plays a natural part) so much as by something historically umbilical. I’ll go into that another time, or not at all. Or maybe I’ll just say that it’s in that small pocket of time…like in If Nobody Speaks Of Remarkable Things’ , the city takes a breath, and on more than one occasion I have found myself awake and breathing with it. Conversely, the concept of home occupies that same part of my brain as the one of wilderness, so when Sigur Ros announced that their feature length film would be called ‘Heima‘ (meaning ‘at home’) and be about their homeland Iceland someone somewhere threw a stone, and two birds fell from the sky.

Like today, I’m feeling frail and walking through the brittle October weekday afternoon streets and I am in more ways than one at home.
And on the big LCD screen Sigur Ros are playing at the Electric Proms.
And the bleak bare market square echoes strings and falsetto notes.
And I breathe in.
And I breathe out.
Then I buy breakfast.