I remember the first time. The first time I saw you across the tracks at Basingstoke station; you were staring at the floor stood with your feet pointing at each other. You wore a baggy beige cardigan over a Sid & Nancy t-shirt that was a bit too new, tight black jeans that led to white plimsolls. You had long blood red hair that came to points on either shoulder, like flames licking at your collarbone. I think I caught your eye once or twice before I got on my train. I remember I immediately pulled out a receipt to write something about you on. The receipt was for fags and IRN-BRU, obviously. Those two things you’ve grown to hate.
I still believe it was fate that brought us together again. I used to use lines like that in the beginning. Everything was ‘fate’ and we had to ‘grab even the tiniest opportunities for happiness’ as they came. I was just spaced out, thinking the world was a dream so social niceties were disregarded. If I’d thought what was happening was real I’m sure I wouldn’t have been so ridiculous and brash in my attempts to seduce you. Or maybe I would’ve been worse; using alcohol like the others sleeping with strangers waking up in dirty single beds.
When I saw you again in that shitty pub in Farnham, I felt I had to talk to you. You made eye contact four times before I did anything; Ian gave me a pep talk and lashed me with insults until I spoke to you. As I walked over your friends scowled a little, but you stood there, with your feet pointing at each other, giggling softly into your drink. We talked for probably twenty minutes with no stop, I remember it was all utter shit because it always is at that point isn’t it? It’s not what you say it’s the way you say it, as somebody once said. You gave me your phone number and we went back to ignoring each other all night, bar a few glancing smiles.

I always thought there was a romance in my hounding of you, and I know you did too. I was fine at first. You were just a pretty girl at that point. Pretty only to me, but pretty nonetheless. We met up between our hometowns and I bought every drink you could’ve wanted and a few you didn’t. Your tiny smiles as I would explain the intricacies of the chance of us meeting in my over the top, almost dancing way, I still remember them. It’s just a shame neither of us has smiled in months. It all got so heavy for no real reason.
I’ve still got all the little fragments of paper I’ve written about you on. I used to glue them into this old notebook, but in the recent past I’ve not wanted to look at them so much, and I’ve pushed them all into a shoebox that I keep under my bed. I’ve written about the fear I feel when you call me past midnight. I’ve written about the look you give me when I don’t wear my hair the way you like it. I’ve started writing about you in the past tense.

I remember we first kissed as you left the train. I felt like my bones were popping; you were the amalgamation of everything I’d wanted since I was about 14. I watched you walk down the steps as my train pulled away and I envisioned us at 30, living in a minimalist flat, playing ‘Strangeways, Here We Come’ and cooking together. It was the last train home and so dark, and I remember I was on the edge of laughter walking from the train station such was my happiness. I rang Ian and explained it all. He told me this was our year, and I believed him.
It went on exactly like that for some time. Absolute ecstatic happiness, a drugged dazed feel to us. We would spend weeks together never arguing. At Christmas we spent all our money on each other. I remember one day we went to a gig in London you’d bought me tickets to, given with the rhetorical ‘the other ticket’s for me you know?’ with no hint of sarcasm. We made a day of it, fitting four ‘dates’ into one day; I took you shopping, we went for drinks, I took you to dinner and then was the gig. I made a joke about the third date being the date a girl had to ‘put out’ and you started searching for a public toilet that was secret enough. I would have lived that day over a thousand times if I could. Every moment was perfect.

When it came to meeting each others’ parents I wasn’t terrified as I always was before. I remember with a girl before you the meeting was sprung upon me, so huge was my fear of it, on a day that I dressed like Dennis The Menace. Her mother drove us into town so she could pick up her birth control pills. You’d told your parents we were having sex because you thought you were such a grown-up, but the truth is I would’ve happily slept in separate beds to avoid being haunted by the memories of that first experience. Your mother said there was nothing to me when I left, because I had spoken about three words to her, and they had been to ask where I could smoke.
I remember when I told you I loved you for the first time. It was at the door of your parents’ house, we’d just been out so you could show me to your friends. They disapproved of various aspects of my appearance but that was okay. You told me to throw my cigarette away, but I was smoking it desperately, not knowing when I would get to have another one. You waited impatiently leaning against your door, giving me this look you had, with slightly shut eyes and tightened lips. I apologised, laughing a little, and then absent-mindedly appended those three damning words. Your eyes opened and you kissed me with my mouth full of smoke. I explained that it had just come out but that I meant it. You said it back, and that you’d been waiting to say it. It was brilliantly cold outside and I remember I shivered; time went slower while I waited for your reaction. We walked in and I thought you were going to cry, but you didn’t.

Our slow demise is tracked on the back of receipts, fag packets and Irn Bru stickers. It’s hard to pin down your Scarface moment; the moment when you descended guns blazing into paranoia. I know that the descent started about two months ago though. That’s what I can sense from the receipts, fag packets and stickers.

You never used to call for phone sex like you do now. We would talk on the phone and I would know you were touching yourself, and I was fine with that. It was funny if anything, missed breaths giving the game away. When you admitted it I faked shock because I thought it might freak you out to know I had already thought you were. In a way I wish I’d pretended I was disgusted, because once you admitted it you seemed to call only for that purpose. You’d set up strange scenarios that were meant to excite me, and I was meant to do the same though I never could bring myself to engage in it. I’d just parrot and say ‘oh, are you?’. When you’d ask me if I was touching myself I’d say yes, of course, but the truth is Jane I never was. I don’t know if I’ll ever understand the appeal of saying you’re doing filthy things to each other while you’re not actually doing them. This got more intense until I nearly cracked. You called from outside a pub, saying you’d left your friends inside and that you were far enough from anyone for them to hear or see what you were doing. I have this image of you burnt on to my eyelids now – outside a pub with your tights down fucking yourself to my stuttering replies. I don’t even have a ‘sexy’ voice. I sound like Russell Brand arguing with Tom Waits and helium. I hoped I could shake that image but I can’t. It’s such a dramatically depressing snapshot of depraved lust that it’s become my main memory of you.
It was the suspicion you had that got to me. You would call, asking how many women I’d slept with on a fortnightly basis, as if the number had gone out of your head or you were trying to catch me giving a higher number than you remembered. I introduced you to my friends and you asked which of the three women present I had slept with. I laughed. The number was zero and it still is. You complimented their breasts and said how beautiful they were whilst staring at me, as if you didn’t believe I had never fucked them. On the way home you spat out these horror stories of your previous sexual endeavours that only worked to raise bile in the back of my throat. It was never a competition Jane. It’s just something that happens. You burst into tears after recounting a story about two guys at a party who you still saw around from time to time, but I struggled for words to comfort you. You screamed that you’d put me off, but it wasn’t the story that did it so much as the reason for its delivery.
All the while the phone sex was getting more frequent, your voice more desperate sounding on the end of the phone. Sometimes I’d hear cars rushing by, or you shutting a door on a group of people and immediately going into it.

But the point that I knew this had to come was last Thursday Jane. I don’t know if you’ll remember it; I’ve hoped you were drunk. It was the abject Scarface moment. At around 2am you sent five texts that screamed ‘I love you’. ‘I hope you know you are loved’ read another, five minutes later. ‘I love you so much’ was the next, two minutes later. All in block capitals. I was asleep so I didn’t get these until after the phonecall.

You said it was an emergency. There’d been an accident. I swallowed hard and asked for more detail; where you were, what had happened, who you were with. You said you were alone in your bedroom, and your whisper held a sense of fear. There was a mention of chains; that you were tied up, naked. You were in your bedroom but you didn’t know when whoever had done it would be back. You didn’t remember a face, or even a build to match whoever had done it to you. Your mum was gone for a few days, or so you told me.
And at the time, I thought about coming down. I thought about getting the first train, or maybe even a taxi. But you see Jane, I was asleep. I was in that state where anything someone says to you is feasible. You’re still deciding if the dream you had was real or not. But when I thought about the story, it didn’t make sense. You managed to text me fifteen minutes before you called. I’ve never been attacked in my own house but I guess it’d be hard to type hogtied. The way you didn’t remember anything about your attacker; I remember the layout of your bedroom and you must’ve seen them leave the room; virtually impossible not to.
When you called again a half hour later, as I slept on the decision, you could still talk fine, and ‘your attacker’ hadn’t come back. Slowly my brain decided this was an insane plea for me to visit you. And several more calls, until around 7am. I could’ve got a train by then, but you kept detailing how you were tied up and it was exactly like the unsolicited phonecalls from phonebooths with your trousers around your ankles. I kept wondering why you would call me instead of your mother. And after about 6 hours sleep, I decided it was all a lie – a way to get my attention back. Maybe that’s a sexy scenario for you, but for all of fifteen minutes I was terrified. It’s disrespectful Jane, to make up horrific situations for me to prove my love.

I did love you Jane. It’s hard to see those words on the page. And I thought about doing this over the phone, but you deserve more than that, even after all these games. And I think you’ve seen this coming, as we haven’t spoken since. I hope this letter reaches you soon enough. Give me a call if you want to talk. I hope you understand. Not talking has probably been a good way to prepare for receiving this news.

With regards.

Now in its third year the festival has grown rapidly and boasts live music, wild parties and film screenings, which bleed into each other to create a heterogeneous but somehow completely consummate occurrence.

Last year saw screenings of critically acclaimed film’s such as Duncan Jones’ sci-fi ‘Moon’, which stunned audiences with its brave study of what it means to be human, avant-garde director Werner Herzog’s intense and unwavering documentary ‘Grizzly Man’ and the Oscar-winning ‘Man On Wire’.

Other past highlights have included live performances from artists like British Sea Power, The Memory Band and Amiina all providing stunning scores set to classic films such as ‘Man of Aran’ and ‘The Wicker Man.’ Not to mention the wild parties previously headlined by artists as diverse as Paloma Faith and Acid Brass Band.

This year’s festival hopes to build on the success of years past and the line up is already looking incredible with a rich range of sundry and incommensurable artists coming together to create something wonderful. Films set to stun include, along with many others, ‘London River’ directed by Oscar winner Rachid Bouchareb, Jessica Hausner’s critically acclaimed ‘Lourdes,’ Doors documentary ‘When Your Strange,’ and surprise Edinburgh festival hit ‘Out of the Ashes,’ which is actually set in Jersey.

There will also be melodious treats from the likes of experimental Japanese rockers ‘Bo Ningen’ and Euros Childs and Richard James of Welsh alt-rockers ‘Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci,’ who will be enriching a tapestry of animation with their music. Combined with a massive 3D light show at the colossal Val de la Mar Dam, wild parties and many more film, music educational and industry networking events to be confirmed this year’s festival is one you really don’t want to miss.

The Branchage film festival takes place from 23^rd – 26^th September and tickets are available from Seetickets.com, and selected outlets in London (Close-Up Videos), Brighton (Resident Records), Southampton (Harbour Lights Picture House) and Portsmouth (Sweet Memories Record Store). With special festival passes at £59 in August, £69 in September and £79 walk-up during the festival for 60 plus great events and films, and flights from all major UK airports what better way to finish the summer than at a fantastic boutique festival on the most southerly, sunniest point of the British Isles?

He had cried because he had loved her, he had loved all of them but he had known her and loved her the most. They were due to be married.

At the burial he had cried again, he wasn’t sure he wanted to live in a world without Judy, his wonderful sister. He cried tears of anger and sadness until he was sure there was nothing left to give, he thanked Shabhana for the rain that washed away the stench, but not the memory, of death. Nothing could wash that away and he didn’t want it to.

The dogs were dying too, healthy pedigree dogs, first came the blindness then the illness, same as their human masters.

None of the parents of Drummon knew why they were outliving their children, but Tobias’ mother saw a tragic and inconsolable pain in her son and tried to relieve him from it the only way she knew how. She took his hand and led him to the bedroom before reciting from the Tenet and taking off her dress.

The books words resonated hard in Tobias’ head as his mother kissed him; he slipped off his shirt and stroked her breasts, all the time reciting those fragile and delicate words in his head. ‘Judy’ he moaned, ‘I can be Judy’ his mother whispered, ‘she came from my womb . . . I can be Judy. . .’

Tobias wept, closed his eyes and held her close, his dead sister’s sweet scent discharging off his mother’s cunt like a bitch in heat, filling his nostrils with the familiar and momentarily resurrecting her.

‘Thank you,’ Tobias said holding his naked, shaking mother in his arms, ‘your welcome Tobias,’ she replied.
‘It was almost like having her back . . . how long do you think I have mother? My vision is already deteriorating.’
‘I don’t know Tobias, please it upsets me to think about it, I’m sure Shabhana has a plan for you . . . for all of you.’

This is how I feel about Marie.

When I was young and stupid nothing she could do would even register, I had been isolated for so long I had forgotten what love looked like. She could induce vitality, cultivate things inside me that would envelop and meander around my internal antagonists, throttling them, before blooming with a dazzling incandescence. Mesmerising flashes of brilliant colour and light surrounded her wherever she went. A rare, magnetised, effusive aura of infectious lust crashing overhead and catching you in its riptide, dragging anything in its vicinity into open water, further from shore, further from safety. I was dead until I met her; it only seems fitting that she should be the one to kill me. It was her beauty that had seduced me but over the years my view of her has become gradually emaciated by the vacuous and malevolent nature I had once mistaken for stoicism and sniping wit. Now even her looks are fading, ten years can do that to a woman, especially with a soul as ugly and Machiavellian as hers. Most people realise that society’s observation of aesthetic beauty is transient and ultimately meaningless, that the inevitable and superficial changes enforced by time add character. Marie is under the impression she can beat it, that she has discovered the fountain of youth. This particular fountain, Dr. Karl Grossman, is some sort of awful hybrid of plastic surgeon and dermatologist. Quite how this buffoon of a man made it through medical college is beyond me, his frizzy red tuft of hair, pantomime movements and bulbous, vermillion alcoholics nose give off an aura not of a competent doctor but a Chaplin-esque circus clown. His business acumen however cannot be questioned; I have somehow paid this rat of a man tens of thousands over the last four years too slice my wife into what now resembles a badly drawn caricature of Anthea Turner. She’s had it all, fat transfer, hylaform, thread lift, laser treatment, the list is almost infinite; her new face is worth more than my car. You may regard me as iniquitous but if I am it is down to her.

I blame her.

Blame her for becoming boring, for losing my edge, for disregarding what I love, for having endured Summer of ’78 by Barry fucking Manilow, for being trapped behind a white picket fence, for being someone I wasn’t, for becoming morose and resentful, for wasting my best years, for getting old, for feeling old.

I am vacant again.

I don’t blame her for this, I’ve always been empty, for a short while she filled me with a tangled, opaque façade of happiness, but once the knot was slipped and I was hung deception dissipated into the atmosphere like a toxic gas.

Now there are only windows of true connection.

Every weekday at 9.30 I go to work. My office is a sterile, dead place, a baron wasteland scattered with equally dull ‘features’ if you can call anything transparent a feature. It endorses, practically promotes impotence.
Everything in here that isn’t diaphanous is an off kilter gruelish colour, somewhere between white, blue and gray. The ridiculous thing is Marie’s father, who gave me this job, paid some counterfeit interior designer £50,000. The fraudulent ‘expert’ then took this money removed everything and gave the whole department the feel of a Gulag run Siberian labour camp. Supposedly it ‘promotes work ethic, functionality and focus by getting rid of distractions and uncluttering workspace using clean minimalist design strategy.’ All it promotes in me is nausea. I started working here about seven years ago, after being given a house and a car, I’m on a very healthy six figure income and I have never done a days work, I don’t even know what my job entails.

Mr Pierce, Joe outside these walls, tells me that I’m ‘in charge of an elite team of sales representatives,’ but in my seven years here I have spoken to them exactly seven times, at Christmas parties, most of them don’t even know who I am.
Four of them told me for the first six months they would observe me through the glass walls fearing for their jobs, thinking I was something they called a ‘tactical streamliner’ brought in to get rid of any dead wood. ‘On the contrary, I’m simply a man who sits behind a desk’ I reassured them, in half jest.
Lying face down at my desk I’m stirred by an e-mail notification, it’s from Marie reminding me of a lunch date we have today.

Tom,

Don’t forget we have lunch with Dr. Grossman and his wife today at the Tiffin Room.

I want to go over the details of my new surgery with both of you and Jean could be useful as well, an objective woman’s perspective.

I’ve booked us a table for 12.30, DON’T BE LATE! I’m quite sure the maître’d there already thinks us savages for the way you behaved at the Stop Climate Chaos benefit last month.

Make sure to bring your wallet as well, last time was quite embarrassing, you simply cannot invite someone to lunch and expect them to pay, regardless of how many times you have taken them out before.

I’ll meet you outside at 12.15 so we can order the wine before they arrive, they have such poor taste in that department and always humiliate us by consulting the sommelier.

I shall see you then.

Marie x

After reading the e-mail I begin to laugh as my doped up brain sees the comedy in the tragic situation. OxyContin or ‘hillbilly heroin’ if you’re a consumer of sensationalist media, is one of the most adaptable pharmaceuticals on the market. You can shoot it, snort it or ingest it as normal, hell you can bake it in a fucking space cake and the effect is still the same, pure mental oblivion.
The perfect drug for somebody like me.

If chewed it produces a mellow high that doesn’t make you lose control or even show any signs that you’re on anything at all. Insufflated it produces a much more intense, if short lived hit, for instant relief from all of life’s woes. I was first prescribed it five years ago by my GP after a skiing accident that left me in traction for 3 weeks. After my spine had recovered I was in so much pain I was approved OxyContin as its slow release pill form means it provides sufficient relief all day, it wasn’t long before I was grinding it up for a faster harder hit.

I am now an addict, I say it without shame as it helps me through the day, without it I’m sure I would lose my mind. Once the prescription ran out I had to find other ways of getting the drug, I managed to find Charles, an underpaid male nurse at the Crest View Hospital. He supplements his meager wage by ransacking the drug store and selling overpriced prescription pharmaceuticals to addicts for a sickening profit, of course we’re happy to pay.

At 12.15 I dutifully meet Marie outside the restaurant, ‘Tom, you look like hell,’ are the first words her noxious tongue spits at me.
I instantly lose patience, ‘well thank you,’ I retort sarcastically, ‘let’s just get this awful business over with shall we?’

Cold blinding indifference is all I can seem to muster now as Marie’s carbonated streams of bullshit crash into me, a deafening flux of banal stupidity. There was a time, when I was less tired perhaps, that I could block it out, or at least deflect it and let those around me suffocate in her vacuum. The sickening realisation that these meticulously aimed statements of moronic intent have begun to slowly but pertinaciously penetrate the back reach bush of my subconscious rocks me, and I worry that I’m starting to think like her.

‘His stuff is fantastic, he recently exhibited in Paris . . . oh Jean I forgot to tell you I saw Joanne Matthews the other day, she was wearing a beautiful cropped lace top, there are so in vogue, I think I may have to be naughty and treat myself to an early birthday present!’

This maladroit transition from the topic of a new pretentious artist she has decided to espouse to casual fashion makes me realise its impossible to think like somebody you hate.
‘So Tom, your good wife’s under the knife again, breast augmentation old chap, bet your thrilled aren’t you?’ This vulgar question pulls my attention from one odious conversation and throws me into another.
Before I can answer Marie butts in, ‘Doctor,’ she giggles like a lascivious school girl, ‘you are wicked . . . I’m getting them as a present for Tom, give him a couple of extra cup sizes to contend with.’ I’m unsure how she manages to articulate this fabrication with a straight face knowing full well we haven’t had sex in over a year.
They continue to talk about me as if I am absent.

‘Well I’m sure he will be more than happy with the job I do on you, I will make you even more stunning than you are already,’ turning his tenebrous face to mine he winks, ‘no mean feat old chap.’
‘Oh Karl, that’s so sweet,’ she whispers in adoration and taking him by his pinched skeletal hand adds ‘I always know I’m safe with you.’

Her foot brushes past mine on the way to his crotch, she doesn’t notice.
‘You know I could never let anything happen to you Marie.’ He responds, kissing her hand and contorting his weasel face into something that reminds me of a smile but never quite peaks at one.

I have been aware that my wife is having an affair with Grossman for a while now; this is however the first time I have been confronted with it. The fact that my wife is having an affair is not was bothers me, our distorted idea of monogamy only goes as far as keeping the identity of the third party secret, a rule my darling wife has, on this occasion, decided to ignore.
Now I know it’s him, all I can do is think of their disgusting concepts of eroticism.

The joyless, impersonal setting of an operating theatre permeated by two naked figures coated white in the harsh artificial light. They simulate people but move like numinous robots, completely void of anything that isn’t perfunctory or mechanical.
Drawing closer reveals them as corrupted clones of the familiar. Grossmans spindly body looms over her, his cadaverous fingers reaching for cold steel before lacerating fresh, deathly exotic orifices into her spotless torso. Marie writhes under dark reassuring stratus clouds of black, emanating from the Doctors dishonest mouth, a naïve white horse surfing the wave of a vast and intense meridian I could never permeate her with.

‘E-e-excuse me,’ I hurriedly stutter rising to my feet in a confused attempt to exorcise this horrific image from my head, ‘I’ll be back in a minute.’ ‘Off too drain the snake old chap?’ Grossman shouts in his billingsgate fashion, I don’t answer.

Walking into the cubicle I calculate exactly how many 40mg pills I will need to get through this harrowing luncheon and take out my snuffbox. ‘Two should do it,’ I think out loud. I chew on one while I place the other on the toilet stall and crush it with my wedding ring. Once I have pounded the hard tablet into fine chemical confetti I cut it into three perfect lines and inhale one a minute with a makeshift banknote nozzle. After the third stroke the rushing euphoric high hauls me out of the cubicle, out of the toilet and into my past. I think of and question all the times I’ve tried to go clean.

Memories of rare horrifying feelings.

Explosive bones detonating on a cellular level, sending sharp mineral encrusted ossein bullets ripping through me in slow motion. Blood the temperature of fire, every heartbeat pumping pure molten pain around every part of the body. The constant sickness, a malady so unrelenting and remorseless every heave clutches the stomach in a vice like grip before convulsing the solar plexus like a buckshot to the gut. Ears tuned into the constant screaming of opiate receptors spraying white noise and confusion into the brain while the nervous system seems to howl and asphyxiate in an enzymatic inferno.
Life is now suffering without this drug.
Walking back into the derelict crash pad of my life I felt more comfortable, safe in clandestine synthetic sanctuary and ready for their onslaught.

I happily sat in silence and watched their words animate themselves and dance around their casual heads, electric monologues, betraying everything they were and are, horrid junkies of attention. I think about decapitating Grossman and putting an apple in his mouth like a roast pig, he already looks like one. I knew I would have to confront him but this was not the time or place, ‘no’, I thought, ‘it has to be perfect, I want him to curl into the foetal position and call for his mother.’

So here I find myself, sitting in an acquaintances vineyard with a head full of stolen wine and opiates clutching a pistol; waiting for the adulterous couple to return. Expecting a night of passionate infidelity, a welcome break from his disused wife, the Doctor will instead find a handgun and corybantic fervour.

Grossman will snivel and beg for a forgiveness that won’t ever come and Marie will lust at my authority, its all part of the game. It all started when I found out about Marie’s first betrayal, Tristan Vek, a guy from the office I played squash with on occasion. I gutted him with a Stanley knife, Marie found out and we made fanatical love for the first time in 2 years. My jealous act had made her want me, her total moral abandon made me want her, it is in these brief passages of execution that we function. In the four years since that night we have had sex seven times with seven enabling cadavers there to witness it. Infidelity with Marie however is not a death sentence, the game has 5 simple rules; they’re written down somewhere:

Rules of the game.

1. The third party has to come into Marie’s life naturally, no looking for people to play with.
2. Marie must introduce the third party to me.
3. I must work out that the affair is happening, no clues.
4. I must find that person unbearable.
5. The confrontation and method of murder must be a complete surprise to Marie.

As I revise the rules in my head I hear a key turn in the door downstairs and my breath turns sharp and animalistic as primal, wicked urges take me over. Soon the medical panjandrum would be dead, unable to use his years of learning to stop himself being extinguished.

The irony of this makes me smile.

As they walk through the door I pistol-whip the doctor’s mouth so hard I’m sure I’ve broken his jaw. I hear a weak feeble voice escape his whimpering mouth and realise the wound is less severe.
‘take anything you want . . . just don’t hurt us . . . please!’ ‘Oh I will be taking what I want alright, I’ll be taking my wife back for a start you slimeball. ‘TOM?! TOM HORNER?!’ ‘Yes dear, my husband, Tom.’ Marie whispers seductively into his ear before tonguing his bloodied mouth, ‘he’s probably known about us for some time’ she adds before dragging him by what little hair he has left and positioning him in front of me and kissing me.

Her mouth tastes sharp and metallic from the blood and I smile at her for the first time in months.

‘YOU BITCH!’ Grossman screams. ‘Oh dear Karl, did you just call my wife a bitch? I’ve killed men for less.’ I state with a wry unwavering smile. ‘Please god . . . please god . . . please god’ Grossman mutters under his foul breath, unable to look at me.
‘God? God is an illusion created by the vanity of man old chap,’ I spit back at him, ‘how ironic that you call for a god you have helped fabricate, no Karl, there will be no help from him up there, not for you, not for an adulterer Grossman.’
As Grossman contemplates my secular hypothesis and wrestles with its connotations I lower the pistol to the back of his anxious, whimpering head; Marie’s wild eyes follow my hand and I notice how beautiful she looks draped in moonlight and betrayal.
A low rumbling pop rings out across the exclusive and isolated Horne Valley, never to be heard by anyone; Mother Nature loses one of her bastard children in an act of excited brutality.

Lying half asleep I stroke Marie’s long seductive hair and try to engage in her post-coitus pillow talk.
‘Tom?’
‘Yes dear?’
‘Do you think we’ll ever be caught?’
‘I hope not Marie, the possibility of these moments is the only reason I haven’t put a noose around my neck.’
What’s wrong with us Tom? . . . this isn’t normal.’
‘Normal’s just a point of view honey . . . go to sleep.’
‘Don’t dismiss it Tom, you’re not listening to me.’
‘I switch off when your lips move.’
Pushing me away, turning her back on me she says, ‘Your such an ass Tom.’
Sinking into the comfortable void of slumber I think, ‘Here we go again.’

The moment I saw her lying in the hospital bed I knew she wouldn’t leave here. With pale walls and hints of beige, to halt the perpetual white from ridding the place of any humanity, it would become her tomb. I walked past the worried and sickly faces of sons and daughters of the inhabitants. This town reflected modern Britain in its aging population; people who refused to die were packing up the shopping in supermarkets, some of whom looked like they might snap their arm back to grab more of the goods filing forwards and leave a rotting finger in your bag. Their children, now middle-aged, come here and sit outside while the patient, usually in their 70s or 80s, has a heart transplant or a lung transplant or a robot hand fitted. There’s not enough of a will to live in them to happily explain why they want all this done. That generation, if they don’t have something to complain about, like how their robot hand keeps going rogue and masturbating them or something, they have no reason to live.
I sped up past all those waiting, knowing exactly where she was. It was where she always was. It had been every few months in previous years, but this time she had waited a whole two years to reinstate herself in that bed, with tubes replacing instinct. She was conscious when I saw her, though I still wish I hadn’t. A supposed broken back limited her movement. She spoke in a strange monotone, her body too ruined to show emotion through anything but the movement of her lower jaw and wrists. She was drawing when I saw her. Her undeniable talent was absent without the ability of microscopic movement in her arms.
She was coated in yellow bruises. Not all over – you could still see the defining edges of blunt trauma in their yellows and purples. Some were pinched, others perfectly cane-shaped, and one on the shoulder detailed grabbing fingers in its colouring. I placed the flowers I’d brought on the side table. On the first of these visits, about four years ago now, I’d joked about putting them in her drip, but that had only alerted me to the fact that this was no place for laughter.
‘So how have you been Anna?’
‘Mum rang you then, obviously.’
Anna was right. For some reason, her mother Rachel always rang me to go see her when she was in the hospital. I’d never liked her mother. Apparently in the years after we broke up she was very complimentary of me, kind of like how Van Gogh was never appreciated in his own lifetime. I think it was because Anna hadn’t had a real relationship after me. She slipped into a string of seedy affairs with married men that she was yet to jump out of.
There were almost no cards of condolence, flowers or chocolates. A little plastic pouch of grapes sat on Anna’s slide-out table in front of her, but nothing from any friends or colleagues. Only family members seemed to send cards after the first few visits she took to hospital.
‘The nurse that visits me, you’d like her.’
‘Yeah?’
‘She’s beautiful. You’ll see her. I like watching her clean up after me. The other day I pushed the table away and when it hit the wall, the food went everywhere. Gravy all over my diagnosis sheet.’
Anna always did the thing of suggesting other women to me. It’s a horrible technique women often use when they’re bitter about not being the object of your affection. They take the lump in your throat as a longing for them to offer themselves to you rather than awkwardness.
‘Your mum said you fell down the stairs.’
She didn’t. She said Anna had thrown herself down the stairs looking for some attention.
‘Patrick was being a little bitch. Saying he had to go pick his children up from school. They’re both 16 at least. He’s an idiot.’
‘Oh right. How is he?’
‘Dead to me now John.’ She laughed. ‘You know, he’s just, replaceable. Infinitely. Like all of them are. I miss being taken out, all these men do is come round for an hour or so a day.’
At this point she looked at me. She had this way of looking at me that made me shiver. She’d tilt her head forward, and her huge blue eyes would look up at me. It always reminded me of 70s horror films about possessions, as though she wasn’t really looking at me, more staring at anything that could hold her looking at it.
She used this look all the time back when we dated. It was the look she used when I first told her I wasn’t looking for a relationship. It was the look she used whenever I questioned where she’d stayed the night before. I never did so in an ‘I think you’re adulterous’ way, even though I did and it turned out she was. At first we never got off the ground, because she seemed to be seeing if she could trade up, even though I was falling horrifically in love with her.
We were both at university, but I didn’t handle it very well for some reason and was permanently drunk or on legally prescribed drugs. At one point I was on three medications: anti-depressants, temazepam for insomnia and beta-blockers for anxiety, all of which were wildly inhibited by my drinking. I first met her in a nightclub when she asked me to take her home after buying me a drink. I took her home but we just stayed up all night trying to outdo each other’s music taste. She used to stay around a lot, and she constantly did this cute thing where she would realise it was about 8am, suddenly become entirely sober and not let me look at her. She was sweet back then, always complimenting me and holding my hand. Nothing remained of that girl now, except for that look, those eyes.
‘What do you want to do?’
‘Pass me my book. Or read it to me.’
‘I’m not going to read to you.’
‘Give me it.’
I handed her the book, some ‘tragic life story’ memoir, ripped from the shelf of a supermarket no doubt. I always wondered why people read those stories and in that moment I knew Anna was reading it to compare to her own life. I sat there looking at my phone for a while, listening to her tut. She engaged me in a conversation about how her book was rubbish, and that the author ought to be ashamed that she considered the content suffering. I gave monosyllabic responses, shifting my weight around, looking for a new source of conversation.
‘What have you been drawing? Is it okay if I look?’
‘They’re no good. I have to do them really slowly to get any decent detail out of my arm.’
I picked up the leatherbound notebook, kept shut by an elastic band.
‘How long have you been using this book?’
‘About six months. I don’t draw a lot any more.’
The first twenty to thirty pages were filled with drawings of 50s pin up girls. Anna had such a strange style, even back when she would draw me. She always smudged the pictures, and used most of her lead on shading.
When we had been together she would draw me often. In the beginning, the pictures portrayed me as this bright young thing, with personality behind the monochrome eyes. I could be sleeping, and when she drew me the picture would seem entirely blissful. This was in stark contrast to the winding down stage of our relationship. I remember the first picture that told me it had all gone to ashes was a picture of my friend Ian and I, having lunch outside a pub smoking cigarettes. We posed, smiling and trying not to move too much, but the outcome terrified me. She had drawn a decade of heroin abuse into my features. She seemed as proud of it as any other picture she’d drawn of me, and that’s what was so unnerving. She didn’t see the symbolism of the picture. She was entirely sure that it looked exactly like me. Whenever I’d seen her sketches after that picture, every single one of them had the same slavish attention to detail. She could find cellulite on Bettie Page’s bicep, and the crow’s feet that anyone posing a smile for her would get were wildly exaggerated. Everyone looked tainted.
After the pin-up girls came pictures of her various partners. You could tell how serious each of these affairs had been by how many pictures she had drawn. Flicking through these, I noticed only one of Patrick. Patrick’s face shared a page with sketches drawn from what I assumed was found photography. A woman tied up and blindfolded, a huge Victorian wardrobe behind her. Some smashed plates in a sink. An empty knife rack.
I bit my tongue for a while. I decided that if she wanted to talk about it, she’d bring it up. In giving me her sketchbook she knew that I would see that page. It seemed those were the last pictures she had drawn before entering hospital, as the rest were sloppily drawn – no straight lines, and Anna had got a bit trigger-happy with her previous smudging techniques. I could see vague representations of her mother, and what I imagined was the nurse she spoke about. The nurse came in at that moment, and Anna stared at me as I greeted her, that same stare of the possessed. She flicked Anna’s drip and asked me how I knew her. I explained myself as an old friend.
‘Told you you’d like her,’ Anna said, spitting the words at her bedcovers, staring down.
‘I was just being polite. She seems nice, anyway.’
‘You didn’t once look at me. You used to say you loved me, but now you couldn’t care less about me seeing you look at other women.’
And there it was. The reason I was here, again, after two years of no contact. We only ever spoke in hospitals, and soon after her death I realised that these visits had been a cry for attention, but the specific attention of me. You always idealise the past, because your brain is designed genetically to cherry pick your best memories. You don’t remember your parents shouting at you on a daily basis throughout your childhood, even though they almost certainly did. That’s what Anna had done. She put me on a pedestal because she didn’t know any better. I wasn’t a particularly bad person, but I remember times when I’d been awful to her. I’m sure I’d have felt the same if I hadn’t have had healthier relationships in the time since we’d split.
‘I know you’re not with anyone any more. Sandra broke up with you a few months ago, didn’t she?’
‘I’m going to leave.’
Sandra was still too fresh to hear this now hateful woman talk about with such disregard for my feelings.
‘No, you’re not. Mum’s coming in about twenty minutes and I know she wants to talk to you.’
‘Why? I’ve met her three times. We spoke about what I was drinking and how we each were. Polite but worthless.’
At this point Anna pulled the drip out of her arm. I looked on in horror, as blood pulsed out of the hole it had inhabited and the fluids flowed out of the bag and on to the floor. I hurriedly put it back in. She just laughed.
‘I don’t understand. This is so strange. It’s four years since we broke up. Four years in which I’ve moved three times, had two different jobs and six different relationships. We look the same as back then but we couldn’t even begin to get along any more.’
At this she told me to leave. I wished her well, apologised and kissed her on the cheek. As I walked towards the door, I heard the drip rock to the floor, and as I turned back I saw her struggling out of bed.
‘Stop it.’
She didn’t.
I called a nurse in, as I struggled with her to lie back down. She bit my arm, and as I recoiled, and the nurse reached the door, she dived into the floor headfirst. It looked fake. It was such a bizarre move that it didn’t sink in for quite some time that she’d even done it. An instinct somewhere told me to laugh at its slapstick nature, but I couldn’t.
Her head had rotated about 100 degrees, so as she lay there, on her front, she was looking out of the door, slightly upwards, through my legs. The nurse called some doctors in to see what they could do. They moved her to the intensive care unit. She’d broken her neck I later found out, over coffee and cigarettes about four hours later with the nurse. She didn’t die for a few days; apparently her brain slowly stopped receiving oxygen. I met her mother again that evening, and she greeted me sternly, blaming me for her death. Saying that I could’ve prevented it. She didn’t want it prevented. When I called Patrick to tell him, he couldn’t have cared less. There was evidence to suggest that he would have a multitude of young women at the same time; the girl in bondage drawn under his portrait bore no resemblance to Anna. She knew the other women, quite clearly.
When the funeral was done Anna’s mother sent me the sketchbook. I flicked through the pages, and in the back was a folded up piece of A4, the edges all torn off. It was a picture of me, in the house we’d shared in 2006. I was watching TV, sat on our old beaten up sofa. There was a sense of fulfilment. There were no smudges.

You started from a background of education in the fields of both science and art.

Yeah, it was a bit mixed really. I did an art O-Level because I was interested, and then I kind of shifted back into the sciences. So art was a strong interest but it wasn’t “happening”. I was doing things in the background that kind of grew and grew irrepressibly when I was at university. I started reading zoology. And then I couldn’t hold back really – I felt a strong urge that if I didn’t go for it at that point then I was never going to get a foothold. I became very attracted to make art and that was what I’d do in the holidays and any spare time I had. And then I broke away when I was at Durham University – I just left towards the end of the second year and decided that I had to do it now or never.

Your artistic work is largely based around science. Was it a conscious decision to fuse both science and art or was that something that just came naturally to you?

Well it didn’t happen for a long time. I left Durham in the late 70s, went to Goldsmiths and made different sorts of work. And that went all the way through until 1990 – so I’d spent all that time making work that was not science-based. I went through various stages – when I was at Goldsmiths I was a sort of “object maker”, then when I left Goldsmiths I went to the Royal College of Art and did painting. Then I started doing sculpture, and a lot of these were made from suitcases. People were jokingly saying, “you’re getting a bit obsessed with suitcases” so I felt I had to do something else. And so in the background I started making some photographic works around science issues and going back to my interests in that kind of world. That’s not to say that all of my other words were devoid of connection with nature, and the land and environment – works like “Patchwork”, “Hedge”, “Fossil”, “Pearl”…there was a lot that was quite organic. I think the changing point was around 1996. I was making a few black and white photographic pieces that are in the show – “Breath”, and “Whistle”. And then the photographic work started creeping up a bit, until I made Magic Forest in 2002. Then I stopped doing all of the other work. Up until that point I was still shifting back and forth – still doing a lot of computer-driven images up until the late 90s as computing and art were just fusing at that point. So I was doing a lot of work using the replication of photographic material as a form of sculpture almost. The computer gave the opportunity to use photographic ‘material’ over and over, so I had as much suitcase material as I could ever want.

Some of your pieces in “Dendritic Forms” exhibition are from 1994 and 1996, and then you’ve got works from this year or the year before. How have they all been united for “Dendritic Forms”?

In a sense that’s down to Robert Devcic who runs the gallery (GV Art). The slot for the show came up, and there was a bit of debate about what might show, as there was a notion that I might show earlier work – early paintings and things – and then there was this thought of “well why don’t we thematically it around “Magic Forest” and go back through all of the work and search through where the tree motif occurs – where the “Dendritic Forms” come in. It was always meant to be a show that was fairly straightforward to put together. “Magic Forest” had just been in the States, and a copy of that came back that was fairly new and in a good state, and all of the other photographic works were here in Winchester where I live, so it was a matter of sorting through those. But there were certain tree/root-shape pieces that we didn’t select because they were larger and slightly more inaccessible, that would have fitted the subject matter but weren’t accessible at that point. And there’s the up-to-date ones – there had been a period where I was doing a project around perception, and my motif for that was based around trees, so there was a lot of current work that fitted in as well.

You say that Robert took part in the selection process for the exhibition. How much were you involved in this, and are you happy with the selection on display?

Yeah, I’m very happy. I’ve worked in more “non-commercial” spaces over the years where I’ve had more control over what was put on, but in this instance I was very pleased that Robert came along with a very clear eye as to what he wanted. So basically, I presented things to him that I was happy to show and then he selected from that – so in a way, both bases were covered. There were a few pieces I made in acrylic boxes that got left out, but that was understandable in a way, as I don’t think they’re completely resolved. The images are, but the way the boxes are made and are hung isn’t. So I think he made a good call on that.

When you say that they’re “unresolved” – do you mean that in reference to the way they’re produced? Is there more to be done on them?

The actual images are all done – they’re all photographic prints, and there’s nothing on those I would go back and change. It’s just about how they’re presented and how they work as objects now. I’ve got a couple of issues about how they connect to the wall, and yeah…I’m still not comfortable with the final realisation of that. So they’re resolved in terms of content – just the hanging system is not working.

So presentation is an issue – obviously as an artist, you want your pieces presented in the optimum environment. In the case of something like “Magic Forest”, which is very dependent on the location in which it’s presented – is that often an issue?

Yeah, it can be. It’s toured around quite a lot since it was made. In terms of Robert and the space he runs, GV Art…it’s a moderate space in comparison with some of the big spaces it’s been shown in. What I try to do every time is to adjust the screen size so it works within that particular space. Ideally it’s shown as a bigger piece. I believe the screen size at GV Art is about 2.4 metres…well, really what I like to see it on is screens that are a minimum of 3 metres across, up to 5 metres. A couple of the shows I’ve done in the states – at Exit Art and the Williams College Museum of Art – would use much bigger screens. Another thing that happens that I don’t fully appreciate is that the smaller the space, the more light that gets scattered around. When “Magic Forest” works ideally is in a large, cavernous space where you don’t see the screens so much…the images float a lot more. When it was first shown at the science museum in London it was in a rather tight space, and it kept getting smaller as the other works were added into the show. It certainly didn’t work as well as it did in my studio in Hackney, as that was a big space and it really floated.

ANDREW CARNIE - "MAGIC FOREST"

Is that where a lot of your work is produced?

It has been in the past. When I moved away to work at the Winchester College of Art, I was still travelling back and forth to begin with from Hackney. But because of all the early testing I did, I have a fairly good idea about how effects will work, so quite often now I operate from a sort of glorified office. I mean I’m in there now…I’ve got some paintings on the go, some acrylic boxes on the floor, there’s a computer workstation and a couple of big monitors, and this is where I’ll work. And sometimes I might come up with a different screen configuration that usually works even though I haven’t ever tested it. Some of them are getting quite big now – the screens for “We Are Where We Are” are 6 metres by 6 metres, with 8 projectors standing 4 metres beyond that on every side, and I don’t have a test area for that. It needs a space some 16 meters by 16 meters. That’s always been quite nail biting really – going along and setting up quite complex things and just hoping it works, and then sitting down afterwards and being like “phew”. So that was true for “We Are Where We Are” and “Around Here”. It’s probably time that I spent a while in a larger space just testing things out again.

Has that always come through for you? Has there ever been a situation where you’ve set it up and it hasn’t been presented as you would have liked it to?

Well the major difficulty in these spaces tends to be what people understand by the term “blackout”. And that means to me pitch-black, and they always think they can get away with quite large gaps or entranceways that aren’t covered. That’s always been difficult to negotiate. And if you’re in a mixed exhibition with quite a lot of other people, you don’t want to be too pushy about getting technicians to do things and take things on, but it has been a difficulty on a number of occasions. But then what you have to do is throw a black cloth over their heads and get down really close to the projector and say “look – this is what it’s meant to look like”, and then they go “Oh right, that looks better. I see what you mean.” But other than that, I think it’s always worked pretty well once you’ve got the blackout. We’ve done it in some very large halls and small spaces and it’s been fine. I’ve had some technical problems in terms of projectors and dissolve units. That’s sometimes quite tricky when they don’t operate. The first time I went over to America, I took projectors and a dissolve unit from here (UK), and set the projectors to the American voltage unit and thought that would be fine. And after 5 minutes it just blew up the projectors basically. And that’s when I learnt about American equipment – I had to find some American projectors, go to an AV place, borrow some equipment and get it to work another way. Apparently it’s because the hertz – or frequency – isn’t the same, as the dissolve unit was made for this country and not America.

Would you say you’re now acquainted enough with the equipment so that you can realise these works more effectively?

Yeah, definitely. I went through a big learning curve in the beginning finding out about equipment, and in the end I started getting equipment made for me. I have these small slide dissolve units that don’t have any buttons on them, so that a curator could come into the space and turn on the projectors, and it would set all the slides back to zero and then work all day. That’s good stuff when that happens. Old fashioned projectors are difficult enough as it is – if the bulbs go…you need someone who knows what happens when the slides jam. I went through a few problems at the first show at the London science museum – stuff like contractors drilling holes in the security cases without taking the projectors out and getting sawdust in them.

I guess reliability is a big thing. If you go into your exhibition and realise that it hasn’t been running properly for the last 6 hours or so then I guess it can be quite traumatic.

Well I guess it’s the same with musicians. You have to know what equipment works and stick with the less fancy things if they’re going to be more consistent. The old Carousel projects like the Elmo ones made in Japan – they’re just workhorses really, just made to run and run.

You have these exhibitions running all day long. How long would you say is sufficient to see something like “Magic Forest” and absorb what’s going on?

That’s a good question. It’s a difficult one. “Magic Forest” lasts about 20 minutes, and I think you need to sit in there for the duration but I do realise that people don’t. There’s an issue about how you manage this as an artist – could I make the pieces easier, shorter and quicker – but my tendency tends to be “no, this is what the work is, it lasts that long – if you catch it you’ll begin to see why it’s that long and get absorbed in it”. One of the things that I really like that doesn’t happen that often is when I show in a collection of rooms that all inter-relate, and then set two or three works up. I think that quite a lot of the works have quieter moments that are quite difficult to get through if you’re not in the mood in terms of viewer perseverance. If you set three works up all in different stages of development then you get caught up in one or the other. I did a show in Winchester at the Art and Mind festival, and I had three works set up in three separate rooms – a group of three people came up off the street and stayed two and three quarter hours, having just nipped into the building. And that was just a case of them watching one, and getting caught up by another one and realise that it had developed…I kind of like that idea of having more than one piece going. The piece “Seized: Out of This World” which is about Temploral Lobe Epilepsy is kind of based around that. One of the parts of the syndrome is that you get deja vu, so the piece plays with six projectors in sets of two, so there’s three different things going on, but they overlap quite considerably. They’re like the same chapters of a book but told slightly differently, and that allows for some of the slower passages – which I still think are really important – to be present. So you’ll see something in one of the other screens, and then go back and think, “oh, that’s the same as the other one…but no it’s not, as images are back to front or the head’s gone horizontal now or vertical”. So utilising that has been quite fun.

ANDREW CARNIE - "SEIZED: OUT OF THIS WORLD"

That’s brilliant. How long do you take over constructing these “narratives” for your work?

Quite a long time. When I was starting off… “Magic Forest” took about six months I think, and that was fairly heavy on the production and drawing side as all of the drawings are created on the computer in PhotoShop. But all of them are about six months…I mean “Seized: Out of This World” took a year from me starting it, as I was interviewing people for a while, talking to scientists, and I just had real problems with it. But I think it worked out really well. There were certain periods were I just didn’t know what was happening with it or where it was going, but it all seemed to come together in the end. So I usually count on it being at least three months and possibly more. But when I say six months, I mean working three or four days a week as there’ll be other things I have to do in the meantime, mainly teaching.

Back to “Dendritic Forms”. You’ve got a talk with scientist Richard Wingate coming up in August. How do hope that this will compliment the exhibition?

Richard and I have given talks together before. He’s the scientist that I talked to in getting the first bits of information for Magic Forest. We worked on one other piece together, “Complex Brain: Spreading Arbor” some two years after “Magic Forest”, various other little bits here and there, and then worked on several applications for money but never been successful with them. So we’ve touched base quite a lot over the years that I’ve known him, and that’s probably going on nine or ten years now. I think it’ll be a chance for people to question what the relationship to the science is and how it works – what the differences are in approaches and work. Richard has gone on over the years talking and being interested in that sort of interface, so it’s just a chance for people to unpick that a bit, and query and quiz it. There are many people who are sceptical about the area and sometimes I’m sceptical about that interaction. I think the difficulties are when you simply repeat the pretty pictures of science. I don’t want to be doing that – I want to make something that’s an artwork that’s in a different kind of space. The science that I’ve seen and explored are embedded in the work but they’re not they’re not always what the piece of work is about. Usually it falls into some other area, and I don’t even always know what that is. “Magic Forest” is a slide-dissolve work and being a series of slides in a carousel, it forms a continuous loop. It goes from start, blackness to a finish, blackness; it is a kind of life cycle of life. Growth, death, repetition. But that’s true in the brain as well, so that’s quite interesting.

ANDREW CARNIE/RICHARD WINGATE - "COMPLEX BRAIN: SPREADING ARBOUR"

So does this scepticism you occasionally have over the concepts in your art ever come through in your art?

Not as much as some artists I think. Some people are very critical of science practise. I’m just enthralled by some of the things that we know and how it’s been unpicked. I just think it’s extraordinary. I’ve started a project about ageing up in Newcastle recently, and I was there in the science labs last week. I know about DNA replication, but I never knew that we had these whole systems in our body – when our DNA gets broken, we have these enzymes that go around and patch it up and mend it. That’s kind of amazing. And just seeing some of the constructs that they understand. There’s a rich patina of proteins that are all working, and that all have jobs at a cellular level, and an atomic level too – some of the proteins are just small variations on each-other. And just about how when DNA is put into a cell, the cell will just replicate the protein and that protein will get to work – like when you put a green florescent protein in a cell, it will immediately start producing something florescent. And that’s just extraordinary.

You’re forever discovering and learning about stuff like this. Would you say that your artwork documents your continuation into science?

I don’t see it working quite like that. What I’m interested in is the ideas. Molecular chemistry at detailed levels – I can’t really make-work about as it’s just so particular, I just don’t know where I’d go with it. I’ve been to places where I’ve just walked away in the end and thought “given the choice, I’m not going to go to that lab, as it’s just so detailed – it’s amazing stuff, but I just don’t know what to do with it artistically”. That was certainly true for the Medical Research Council Centre in Bristol, for the Study Of The Synapse – I came away fascinated by the details they knew, the molecular structures of the synapses, the chemical formulae for the chemicals involved, but it was so detailed I couldn’t make work about it though. I can make work about the more generic ideas about movement and change but not about that. And it’s not the only kind of work I make anyhow – I make science pieces, but then I also make work about psychology or pieces that are just completely non-science. “451” is a piece about burning things, the end of everything…“Around Here” is about various different ideas thrown together – it’s a visual feast in a sense. There’s always these other works that I’ve done that I’ve made for quite different reasons. Everything strikes me as being grey rather than black and white – there’s a lot of merging of ideas, and it’s not clear that I’m completely engrossed in the science.

So science is just one factor that you find interesting enough to express artistically.

Yeah. For me it just gives us very interesting ways to reflect on who we are and what we are. Central to “Magic Forest” is that science was blowing away this concept that the brain is a static thing, it’s all wired like a computer, or washing machines or whatever – no, it’s an organic thing that’s altering all the time – laying down memories…they’re all processes, little signs of growth and change that are happening all the time. And I thought that was just fascinating really.

I saw the exhibition a couple of week’s back, and “Magic Forest” is a great work to be immersed in.

When it works properly you can sit through two or three cycles – I certainly have – in a mesmeric state. I quite like the meditational aspect. And coming back to your question about how long people need to see it for – in a way I was a bit defiant. I could have made it shorter and quicker. But in a way I think… scenes in cinema are quick and fast and over in a flash. I wanted a different experience in what is primarily an age of quick satisfaction. You can just sit down and ponder the work and absorb it.

It started to rain, that annoying non-committal rain that doesn’t soak you but leaves a layer of water on you. You’d planned on a cigarette, but this had ruined the plan and so you were a little more on edge than perhaps you should’ve been. You wore blue jeans for the first time in about four years. Someone told you a few weeks before that because all your jeans are just different shades of grey you seem to come from another planet, which seemed ridiculous until they then related it to why you cannot meet a woman who isn’t insane or drugged. You were drunk at the time they made the remark but even sober it makes a strange kind of sense, and so you wore blue jeans to go meet this girl.

You’d forgotten your headphones and so your mind wandered on to all kinds of things. It was only a ten-minute walk, but it’s impressive how much you can get through in that amount of time. A raindrop hit the top of your spine, sending a chill all through you, and it reminded you of that time you took amphetamines at what wasn’t billed as a family party but turned out that way. You missed doing things like that. Now you just drank and fucked, and back then you didn’t really think about sex. That led you to think of having sex with the girl you were walking to meet, imagining what she might look like naked, if she’d still be as beautiful as she was now at thirty. You figured probably not, but you had a pointless hope. Nobody you knew romantically now would still be with you at thirty. You thought maybe you’d prefer to save the next time you have sex for when you’re in love, but that just made you think of ‘Girls And Boys’ by Blur. You had a second thought, and realised that there is so little pleasure in the world that you couldn’t possibly make a commitment like that. You smiled at the inanity of yourself and stopped under a shop overhang to light that cigarette you needed.

You received a text message from her, it simply read ‘not long now my love’ and even though your mind read it in a cockney accent, as you were sure was intended, you started to read far too much into it, thinking about how feasible it was that you might fall in love with this girl. You threw your cigarette to the floor as a car drove past, splashing a puddle that missed your feet by a few inches. You took this as a good omen and, as you turned to continue walking, saw what you immediately knew to be the girl, Sylvia, walking towards you about 50 metres away.

You knew it was her by the stretched-diamond shape of the body. The way that she was backlit meant you only saw her as a black shape, but your stomach started to turn immediately. You were trying to think of the last attractive single woman you didn’t actively try to sleep with. You realised right then, under that shop overhang sheltering from the rain, that you had become that guy. That guy whose approach to love is ‘throw enough shit at a wall and some will stick.’ And you only had a matter of seconds before Sylvia was greeting you, to convince yourself otherwise or to compose yourself.
She hugged you in a platonic way, and you suggested a bar just down the road that stayed open until 2am. She agreed, and walked on your left side far too close. Your hands brushed more than once, and so, deciding you wouldn’t sleep with anyone who didn’t like the exact same things as you any more, you put your hand in your pocket. Although you had come out with thoughts of another throwaway night with the bedsheets clinging to your entwined bodies, and must quite clearly have given away this intention to Sylvia, you had changed your mind. And you were sure your mind would stay that way until the alcohol spilled into your bloodstream, at which point it always became a battle against a drunken gut feeling.

Mostly you missed being at the centre of it. You missed being the one who was wanted rather than doing all the wanting. Maybe that was the trick – back when you didn’t think of women and just went to fancy dress parties on drugs girls wanted you. Even girls with boyfriends wanted you; driving you home and causing car crashes half-parked on the pavement with no lights on snaking their hands up your thigh when you were too unconscious to notice you were even kissing somebody.

As you walked with Sylvia you talked of the day. You had done nothing, typically. She’d been at one of her ex-boyfriend’s houses that evening, watching a film and drinking wine. This revelation sparked a chill in you; you’d even shivered realising what was going on, what the situation was now. You’d been in this place probably five times before, and three of those five times had ended how these women like Sylvia had wanted, leaving you empty and them filled with ammunition for the ex to get back with them over. You thought about it, and all men go through about six months of ‘I don’t want you, but I don’t want you to be happy with someone else’ before they genuinely don’t care. You had no real proof of this, but you had seen it in so many friends. You’d seen it in yourself too, of course. The nights you’d had avoiding women at bars, avoiding women on dancefloors, avoiding women whilst with other women. Some of them were fun, you felt like you were on the run. Most of them were crushingly horrid, but that itself was a kind of fun.
When you had finally reached the bar it was almost empty. It was a small, clean bar, with sofas made of old cinema chairs surrounded by tables and small stools. This was a good place for this kind of meeting you thought in retrospect, as you could never get too close to someone. The cinema chair arms acted as static chaperones.

Of course, with this evening you could never have won. Either way she was going to tell her ex-boyfriend she went out with you. She definitely didn’t like you as anything more than an accessory to jealousy. The ex-boyfriend would then think about how someone else wanted her, in turn making him want her back. This is how it works, you thought. You’d thought maybe you could just walk out; leave her there when she goes to the bathroom. At least then you would have won, in your mind. You were kind of sick of all the contests you invented in your head, but it was all that motivated you to do anything at the moment. You wondered how deep this went. If you dared yourself to be a successful doctor, would you have done it? Probably not. A contest only counts when there’s a loser.

You had looked at Sylvia for a while whilst ordering drinks. She had this face on that was a mixture of nerves and assuredness. Simply by getting you to come out she had already succeeded in getting her ex back a little bit. You jokingly said she owed you a drink, and the speed at which she agreed to buy you a double vodka and coke confirmed all your beliefs. You only had to be here for a while for her to get her way.
You walked over to the jukebox whilst she got the drinks, and you thought it’d be funny to put on a short playlist relating to the situation. You always do this, even for sex. You and your friend Greg used to dare each other to play various songs during the act. ‘You’re The One For Me, Fatty’ and ‘She’s Lost Control’ were your crowning achievements. Greg had only managed Interpol, which you argued could be a little bit romantic. You hate yourself for doing this, but its really cinema’s fault.

Sylvia sat down at a table in the corner and beckoned you over. The beckoning wound you up. It was one of those things that you could have ignored, or found cute if you had any doubt that her whole aim was to make someone else jealous, but because you had known she was guilty you wanted to sabotage everything she did.
You had walked over after putting a few tracks on. You had been excited to hear ‘She’s In Parties’ by Bauhaus. Not excited as such, but you hadn’t heard it in a long time and it was there to be played. You never got excited any more.

She had started talking about a film you hadn’t seen, she said it was French and about some manic-depressive teenage girl. She started having an affair with a teacher, et cetera, you drifted off. You always attracted this type of girl, with delusions of being cultured but really only partaking to look cultured. Like that girl who went on and on about Harmony Korine but also wore four layers of foundation and a push-up bra. That girl who would rather have sex than watch Eraserhead. You laughed thinking about that. You think a lot of people would rather have sex than watch Eraserhead, but most would have the thought of sex a million miles from their mind halfway through Eraserhead.

You continued to feign interest in this French film, asking the usual questions. You downed your drink and then went and bought two more without thinking about it. You hadn’t eaten in a few days, picking starvation over exercise and so that one drink had hit you a little bit. You dared to ask what the guy she watched it with thought of it. Just to put a bump in the road.
‘He thought it was good, yeah. He suggested it actually.’

The film, at that point, in your mind, became her talking about her ex-boyfriend. Every time she said how great the film was you took it to mean how great her ex-boyfriend was. You found it kind of amusing, to a point. That point was when she muttered an interest in going back to yours. You had managed to bat it away without referencing it.
‘So how long ago did you break up with him?’ You asked, staring down your drink.
‘About 3 months ago now. He didn’t see it going anywhere.’
‘Oh right. And you did?’
‘No, not really,’ she lied.
‘She’s In Parties’ came on and you whispered a ‘yes’ in appreciation. She asked who it was, and when you said Bauhaus she said ‘like the art movement.’ You sighed and nodded. You just wanted to go home at this point. You couldn’t explain why her knowing they were named after an art movement annoyed you. But it was at that point in your interest’s demise, where every little thing felt like a pinch. It got worse when she had tried to touch your arm to see if you were okay. Those touches felt like the duvet when you’re ill, a dull pain that hurts as much as it annoys. You said you were fine, just tired. Tired is endlessly the way out. If you fear you’re being boring, or nothing is being said, you always say you’re tired.

She finally started asking about you, but unfortunately you now had your mind made up that this woman was hateful, manipulative, and you didn’t want her to know anything about you that could be impressive to her ex. You didn’t want to help her. If anything, you wanted to help her boyfriend get over her. He was probably as sick of her posing as you were after her French film synopsis, but he was still vulnerable, in the middle of that six-month buffer. You decided to make yourself look awful, with absolutely nothing for her to boast about. You went to the bathroom and looked at yourself in the mirror, giggling a little bit at the thought of this. She could of course have made stuff up about you when referring to the night to her ex-boyfriend, but that didn’t matter. Just don’t help her, and make yourself an atrocity, you had thought.
You went back out there, and she was on her phone, staring at the screen and typing rapidly. She had looked up at you and smiled as you walked back to the table, her face suddenly evil. It’s funny how your mindset effects your perception of things.
‘So what do you want to do now? This place shuts fairly soon.’ She had asked.
‘I want to go home I think.’
‘Yeah? What’s back at yours? Have you got any drink?’
‘No. Just Irn Bru.’
‘Oh right. Well, shall we stop at an off-licence and get some wine or something?’
‘No, I’m fairly tired. I’ll probably just go home and sleep immediately.’
‘Shall I come with you?’
How blunt, you thought. Not even masking it any more, just desperate for the story to unfold as it should to your ex-boyfriend, you thought.
‘Probably shouldn’t. It’ll be very boring watching me sleep.’
‘Well I’ll walk with you anyway.’
‘You live in the complete opposite direction, that’s stupid.’

You laughed a little after saying this. You didn’t want to offend her all that much, just to make it known that you knew what she was up to. Plus, you had already let a girl walk home with you once before and it ended in everything the girl expected. You hadn’t actually expected it yourself until you reached the road you lived on. You knew she wasn’t going to walk back on her own at 1am. And the talk you had on that walk was insane; she was basically you, down to the last inhibition. The difference was that that girl had been beautiful in every way, and she only wanted the physical to feel closeness to someone. Sylvia was different – disgusting. She didn’t want you at all, in fact you thought that maybe if she bumped into someone more willing at the bar she would’ve gone with them. She was all too happy to use her body as a utensil in getting what she wanted, and could avoid the truth long enough for her to do what she needed to.

‘You are not coming home with me Sylvia. You are in love with your ex-boyfriend. You need to sort that out before you look for someone else. If I would even be so much as a rebound, it would still have been a mistake. But I’m not even that. I’m a way of making your ex-boyfriend jealous, aren’t I? You need to talk to him, not sleep with me. It’s offensive, and what’s worse is that I don’t think for a second you’re the only girl who has tried this. You think of me as a means to an end and that’s disgraceful. So, I’ll see you later.’

You had left her with a look of confusion, and you walked out feeling like James Dean. The rain had stopped now. You lit a cigarette and walked home laughing. You had known it wouldn’t be the last time you saw Sylvia, and she would use your self-righteous speech against you soon enough. And maybe then you would sleep with her. Maybe she had caught you on a bad day or something. Maybe you had overly darkened what was a perfectly normal platonic relationship. But you doubted that. You doubted that more than you’ve doubted anything ever. Message after message came spilling through from her over the next few days. Some sorry, some angry. Some loving. Sylvia was a sickening creation of the late 20^th century, and you had her in the palm of your hand like a bloodied sneeze.

I turn the hallway light off and walk into my room; a mess of clothes and empty cans surround the two islands that are the bed and the desk. Juliet sits on the bed, leaning on her forearms in a sickly seductive manner. Her smile is managing to reach from ear to ear without showing any teeth, and the only light source is a desk-lamp that lights her from the side, accentuating a shadow the bridge of her nose casts over one eye. She pats the bed beside her as if this is romantic and clichés can be overlooked. She’s still holding the smile and I tell her I’ll come over in a second.
I open up my laptop to put some music on but the only songs that really grab me are things that don’t set any of the right moods. I really want to listen to Adam Green or The Birthday Party but I know she won’t get it, so I put on the last LCD Soundsystem album. She stills asks what it is, so I just tell her and don’t go into it. I really wish she would leave. I am already tired of this dance.
I sit on the bed next to her, and she starts playing with my hand. She’s sucking my fingers and looking up at me from where she’s lying. This is all about as sexy as a car crash it’s so blunt, and I sort of hate myself for liking it on a physical level. I go to get some drinks, remembering I have a bottle of wine that’ll hopefully put her over the edge. She doesn’t let go of my hand until the last moment, and I have to make a smile that suggests this is what I want.
Now I’m in the kitchen with two clean cups and half a bottle of white wine and I’m annoyed that this is not what I want. I know I should, she’s sort of beautiful in the right light, if her fringe covers the scar on her forehead. I left the nightclub to the smiling faces of men I don’t know who seemed happy for me so why do I feel like this? I shake it off. I’m going back in there with a positive attitude, and after a couple of mouthfuls of wine in the kitchen I head back in. She’s sort of beautiful I repeat in my head. She’s sort of beautiful.
I walk in with the two mugs of white wine and I don’t spot her at first because she’s under the duvet. I take a swig and ask what she’s doing, in a light-hearted way. She just smiles. I don’t know what to do so I hand her one of the mugs and go to sit at the desk. Staring at the floor to avoid the day-to-day shrapnel I spot her black dress, her blue cardigan, pink pieces of underwear. My stomach jumps a little bit, but that might be from the wine. The stomach jump is not an entirely unpleasant thing.
‘Lock the door,’ she whispers.
‘I’m going to have a cigarette and sort out some music, okay?’
‘Okay. But then get in.’
I search the song titles I’m scrolling through for an answer to this situation, but the only one I see is ‘Frozen In Time’ and that doesn’t help at all. I realise we aren’t talking much at all and she’s interpreting that as sexual tension, so I ask what she wants to listen to. She says ‘something upbeat’ and winks which is probably the most disgusting thing I’ve seen a woman do that wasn’t on the internet. It’s probably about two years since I had romantic sex, and while I didn’t expect it from Juliet I did think she would want it. I may have read too much into it, but the combination of ‘something upbeat’ and a wink means this is going to be filthy, treating each other’s bodies as climbing frames. I just put the computer on shuffle and hope nothing too depressing comes on.
I take off my shoes and cardigan and climb under the sheets, the sickly pallor of her naked body sparkling in the low lighting. It’s a single bed so we lie too close for comfort and she goes for my belt. She giggles, saying that it’s unfair how dressed I am compared to her. I push her hands away, smiling so she isn’t offended and pour us both some more wine. I drain half the mug in one move.

‘So how was your day?’ I ask, smiling slightly so she finds it cute rather than delaying.
‘Good….good.’ She goes for the belt again.
Earlier on we’d talked for about an hour, and that had been fine. I bought us drinks and we seemed to get along, so I don’t know why I’m now so against this. She just isn’t relationship material. I don’t know how I can explain why I know that, but I always did I think; even before the taxi journey back here. Now in my bed she’s proving it, having said roughly twenty words in the half hour we’ve been back. She couldn’t even suggest a band for fear that I wouldn’t like them, or wouldn’t have their music.
On top of this I have more than a slight suspicion that she’d describe me to her friends as ‘quirky’ or ‘weird.’ I think people use those words when they have such parochial attitudes that anyone who isn’t exactly like them is an oddball, and that’s unfair. What’s more unfair is me assuming this of her, I suddenly think.
‘What do you want from this?’ I ask, fairly terrified of any response.
‘You.’
‘No, I mean in the long term, like do you really think we suit each other?’
‘Yeah. I think so. My friends think you’re interesting.’
‘Which friends? Is ‘interesting’ another word for ‘weird’?’
I am careful not to show any annoyance. I can sense I’m being unreasonable, but it doesn’t make me want her.
‘It probably is, yeah. But why does it matter? They like you. I like you.’
I suddenly feel awful and realise that although it would be easier to go through with this, I can’t. She’s kind, and while I hate kindness as a virtue the same way I hate ‘nice’ as an adjective, another one-night stand with Juliet would be damning evidence towards me being hateful. I don’t have a clue why I’ve brought her back here. I’m really drunk now and I keep nearly falling out of the bed avoiding touching any intimate part of Juliet, but I’m determined not to give in.
‘This is what you want now Juliet but in the morning we’ll both feel awful.’ I sigh.
‘I don’t think so. Look, this is what I want to happen. I don’t know why you don’t. We’ve done it before so why not again?’
‘Because I know that I will never introduce you to my parents.’ I laugh a little, and quickly hush myself because I realise how mean that broken sentence is.
‘What do you mean?’ She’s quieter now, and stealing the covers, visibly realising she is naked in bed with a man who doesn’t want that.
‘I mean, nothing will happen. Nothing good will happen here. This is a disaster.’
She sits up unaware that she’s revealing her breasts, leans on her knees holding her head. The sight is kind of tragic. She looks really good naked but it can’t be about that, even when I’m this drunk.
‘Well let’s just sleep here tonight. Is that okay? I just want to sleep in this bed with you tonight.’
I kiss her on the cheek and say that’s fine. It’s strange but fine. She’s not angry enough for me to be comfortable. I go to turn the lamp off and finish her drink for her, followed by mine, and then I take my jeans off and climb in next to her. She pulls one of my arms over her and I hold her as I fall asleep, feeling sorry for her.
As I drift off she’s shaking, probably crying, but I’m too far under to wake myself up and comfort her. Even my dream is drunk, and a series of images precede anything resembling a storyline: a bike, Juliet naked in a park, some candles, a Catherine wheel. I’m on a swing, and Juliet is walking towards me naked, waving her finger as if saying ‘no no no.’ She’s wearing knee-high socks and I seem to get higher on the swing the closer she gets to me. I look down and I’m wearing shorts and a vest, a primary school P.E kit, and she’s still coming closer – so close now that I’m afraid I might kick her in the face. I can’t stop the swing and it’s getting higher and faster and she’s getting closer and just before my feet touch her face, I wake up.

I wake up, and through glued-shut eyes and warped physical awareness I realise that Juliet is now on top of me. She’s looking down at me straight-faced, and I’m kind of terrified but at the same time blasé. We’re holding eye contact as she pushes herself on and off of me, and I feel my face closing up. I have no idea what to do.
She really is sort of beautiful up there, I think. By now it’s the early morning, about half past four, and the sun is pushing through my thin curtains, casting her thin but feminine frame in monochrome. Am I being raped? Women usually say it is impossible to rape a man, because he has to want it to be able to penetrate. I disagree. Yet while I’m thinking about the legality of this unwanted act, it is carrying on and I am stuck for an answer.
‘Am I wearing a condom?’ is all I manage.
‘No.’
‘Are you on the pill or anything like that?’
‘No.’
At this I lift her from under the arms and put her down beside me, asking her what she was doing. For some reason my tongue refuses to be as angry as my mind is. She starts punching me in that way girls do, with the side of the fist rather than knuckles. She’s hitting me constantly, in a marching rhythm, switching arms when one lands itself somewhere on my anatomy.
‘What were you doing?’ I inquire after wrestling hold of her arms. She doesn’t reply. She spits at me, but it hits the pillow.
‘What are you doing?’ I ask with gaining disbelief at what I have awoken to. She kicks out at my torso, manages to kick me to the floor where I hit my head on one of the mugs and start to dream almost immediately.
The swing scenario has returned, and this time I realise that the rhythm of swinging is similar to the rhythm that Juliet crashed down and pushed up off and on me. I am aware that this dream is signalling me being fucked again, like when you experience pain from something in a dream and you wake up in a painful circumstance. This time I can’t wake up and I think that the mug must’ve killed me or knocked me unconscious and Juliet is fucking me as I lie there on the floor, helpless to do anything.

She is sort of beautiful.

ANDREW CARNIE - "10 TO THE 15" (1994)

I imagine that it’s Andrew Carnie’s accomplished educational history which has lead to him becoming such a creative and capable artist. His extensive studies into both science and art – chemistry, painting, fine art and psychology specifically - seem to have fuelled him with streams of compelling ideas, as well as the means and innovation to translate them into provocative and assertive artistic pieces.

For “Dendritic Forms”, Carnie delves into the parallels between organic matter and the human body, with particular attention paid to the aesthetic similarities between the body and trees. This seemed to take a more explicit form in his earlier work on display here – “Dispose”, “Seed”, “10 to the 15” – with human organs clearly depicted and overlaid with streams of beautifully networked veins/branches spilling over the edges, or lungs and kidneys shaped and etched into prints of rich autumnal leaves and trees.

Also present here is Carnie’s “Magic Forest”, which quietly cycles in a dark room off to the side of the main exhibition, consisting of two projectors either side of a set of staggered translucent drapes. Projections of thin, writhing neurones echo like holograms across the series of veils, with haunting shapes unfolding and drifting in and out of the chlorophyll mist, pouring onto the surrounding walls. The piece shifts over time, fading between sparse landscapes and a tangled mass of fluorescent activity, each progression announced by the soft click-snap conversation between the two projectors.

ANDREW CARNIE - "TREE PEARL" (2010)

I was most intrigued by the more complex nature of his recent work – “Autumn Twist”, “Tree Pearl” – with dramatic vortex swirls and abstract forms, barely contained within the untidy ovals of heads and seeds, all detailed in gorgeously organic pink shades. Are these digging deeper into more complicated science, or addressing the same issue with a more instinctively expressive and artistic approach? Andrew is due to hold a talk at the GV Art gallery on August 12^th during which he will most likely clarify his perspective for the more scientifically naïve minds like my own. Also partaking in the talk is scientist Richard Wingate, who will no doubt uncover the extensive scientific significance of what is a fascinating exhibition regardless. I strongly recommended you attend.

The book is written by accomplished business consultant Alison Branagan, clearly equipped with a very comprehensive knowledge of many aspects of business, covering everything from aesthetical presentation to time management to negotiating skills within the book’s pages. All of these topics are approached with a rather imperative writing style – straight instructions coupled with anecdotes and examples to help explain and elaborate on certain points – and it’s difficult to take in too much via a cover-to-cover read. I get the impression “Making Sense of Business” is designed to be dipped into as and when certain topics become relevant as opposed to being soaked up at once, but I can imagine it functions brilliantly when used in this way due to the streamlined, no-nonsense approach to each of its chapters.

Where the book really excels is with what it includes alongside the main body of text. It’s littered with fascinating quotes from philosophers, comedians and successful businessmen – statements you imagine to be framed in the offices of leading entrepreneurs and managers, forming the foundations of successful business philosophy. Also included alongside each chapter are various activities and exercises to aid in the application of the main points. Mind Maps pop up repeatedly; readers are encouraged to lay out their thoughts on paper as a means of un-muddling business processes.

As I’ve said previously, I was surprised at how much the book seems to emphasise the use of common sense. Even as a student with no business experience, there wasn’t much about “Making Sense of Business” that came across as a colossal revelation to me, but as a book which offers an overview for any aspiring entrepreneurs who are fresh-faced to the business world, it manages to be thorough and accessible without ever slipping into patronisation.