In autumn of 2012, they pulled the siphons from my skull, and the spigot from my spine. I slowly started making memories again, but I was rubbish at answering the questions doctors ask patients with brain injuries.
“Who’s the President?” they would ask.
Continue reading Through A Glass, Darkly
Last year’s Edinburgh Festival marked the beginning of our settling in to Auld Reekie. The passing of twelve months means that I’m beginning to sound more like a native at Festival time.
Day 1 of my #fringefest2014. Everyone’s 12yo and/or walking dead slow, but I’m retaining the returning native joy. Joy, I tells ya!
— Ricky Brown (@ricky_ballboy) August 4, 2014
I wrote the above returning from an afternoon at Deborah Frances-White‘s Half A Can Of Worms.
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In 1991, (the) Pixies didn’t need much in the way of a light show to back up their short, shouty songs of biblical retribution and science fiction. A klieg light would flood a giant white sheet, which would dramatically drop to reveal a knitter, a magician, an occasional computer programmer, and a sweaty bloke in a plaid shirt unleashing fire and brimstone in the form of the opening bars of Rock Song.
Continue reading When In Rome, Kill Me
As I walk across the tarmac, Copenhagen Airport’s Terminal 3 stretches before me and away from me. As its location requires, it’s the height of good taste in modern design, all low-slung glass and steel. Inside, it looks like an airport in a world capital of design should — like a 23rd century version of Monet’s Gare Saint-Lazare.
Continue reading The New Normal
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A couple of weeks ago, I attended one of the monthly workshops run by the Scottish Poetry Library. The previous month we had spoken about how effective the evocation of tastes and smells can be in poetry, so for this session our leader had brought along a thin metal case full of small sample vials of Penhaligon’s scents. We were each invited to take a vial, smell the scent, and let it guide our production.
![[Aside — it doesn't work]](http://www.apoplectic.me/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/Scent-Library.jpg)
A quick plug before we move onto Britishness, strokes, and pile-driving Aussie rock:
Nerd Bait will be premiering their latest short-form musical, Wrong Word Write Time (the fictional life story of a pilot suffering from aphasia) as part of Illicit Ink’s Underground night at Edinburgh’s Bongo Club on Sunday, 4 May.
Please come, tell your friends, and please share and tweet these links: 1, 2. Thanks!
Continue reading Kinky Kricket
I’ve mentioned more than once on the blog that I’ve come to believe that one of the big mistakes made by my younger self was to think that everyone else was basically the same as me.
While that might have been a trifle solipsistic, it’s also kind of true. The genetic difference between individual humans today is miniscule — about 0.1%, on average. To a bonobo or chimpanzee, 1.2%. 1.6% to gorillas.
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Continue reading Korea Opportunities
Today, the blog strikes off in a different direction. This post isn’t about brains and lesions. It’s not about metaphorical hearts. It’s about real, physical hearts.
Continue reading The Heart Can Rule The Head
Does anyone remember that old post about memories making us what we are?
Yeah. Neither do I.
Thursday was an awful day for that. Mrs Stroke Bloke and I sat in the movie theatre, chatting before the show started. In discussing the events of that day and the previous day, there were large chunks I couldn’t remember. Continue reading Inside Strokey Blokey