A Brief History of My Creative Efforts - Part 1
Thursday, September 3, 2009 at 02:55PM 
So what is all this "Gaseous Brain" nonsense all about? What does it actually mean? Good question, and the lack of a clear answer reflects my own confusion over what it is I'm trying to achieve, both here on this blog and in life in general.
To be honest, if I could come up with a better name I would change it immediately but original names are hard to come by. I suppose in hindsight the name reflects a creative mind that is overflowing with ideas and desires and unable to settle on a direct route through life. Or just simply, full of a load of old nonsense.
Now I've read that clarity of purpose is the essential ingredient of success. But for years I have struggled to find this clarity (and therefore success). Ok, I know the general ballpark where my strengths lie - creativity, particularly writing. In fact I've always been very creative but never seem to have mastered a particular skill enough or been focused enough on one area to make a real go of it. And my interests are very wide - music is probably my main love but there are plenty of other things that I get excited about such as books, films and technology.
What follows is a very brief history of my creative efforts. Maybe by the end of writing this I'll have a clearer idea of what I should do next. And maybe you'll have a better idea of where I'm coming from. I've been inspired by lastyear'sgirl who has been doing some retrospective blogging recently so over the next wee while I will also be revisiting some of the writing and other stuff I've produced over the years - just for the record you understand.
I have never been a very confident a person but I did show a knack for writing quite early on. My mum being an English teacher no doubt helped as she taught me to read and write before I started school, and my Primary school teacher Irene Bliss was massively encouraging about my creative writing and I still credit her for giving me enough confidence that I felt I could to go back to writing later on after having given up. She would have me read my stories out to the class and let me skip out on P.E. which I was rubbish at so I could do creative stuff.
COMICAL
I was a fanatical fan of The Beano as a child living in Coventry, inspiring me to make my own comics and sell them to my neighbours (I included my neighbour's cats as some of the main characters to encourage them to purchase). I was also obsessed with pigs for some reason and had a fondness for the comic Oink. But by the time I got to about 12 I started realising my drawing skills weren't up to scratch and after a rejection letter from Acne (the kid's version of Viz) describing me as "utterly mad" I gave up on the goal of being a professional comic strip artist. I also produced a photo story called 'Dare Bear' featuring one of my soft toys dressed in superhero garb battling various star wars vehicles which was a substantial hit within family circles but failed to set the publishing world alight. Around this time I also made my first attempts at recorded sound by forming The Eejits with my cousin Lucy, though the results are unlistenable to anyone but the most masochistic.
LUVVIES
At school I had a terrible English teacher more concerned with punishing non-conformity and minor grammar and spelling mistakes than encouraging talent, so I naturally looked elsewhere for support. I won an award for 'most promising newcomer' as part of a Donegal-wide acting competition when playing the part of the convict in the Bishop's Candlesticks, which I believe was an extract from Les Miserables. This led to very enthusiastic encouragement from my drama teacher, who even loudly proclaimed my talent to the director of a visiting production of As You Like It starring Sylvestor McCoy.
To advance my fledgling theatre career he suggested I perform a mime of myself shaving in the mirror (I wasn't yet old enough to actually shave) as part of another acting competition at Derry's Guildhall. I was marked poorly by the judges though I do remember one of them remarked I was "very brave" - which I read between the lines as 'what were you thinking?'
Following that I was involved in an excruciatingly embarrassing attempt at street drama as part of Derry Youth Theatre, which included running down the city's Shipquay Street banging drums and yelling in order to attact people to a small square. Once there we performed a mainly silent piece that centred around two tribes on either side of a wall. However the wall was an unstable structure made mostly out of bits of wood and fabric and half way through the performance it was blown down. I had purposely neglected to publicise the event in the hope no-one I knew would ever find out, but to my horror, on the other side of the wall I could see my piano/keyboard teacher watching proceedings with amusement - no doubt payback for all the times I had turned up without having practiced since the last lesson.
These further forays into theatre did not focus on my strengths of performing dialogue/character acting, and I lost the will to continue. I have gone to an acting class since in which I received encouragement from Ewen Bremner aka Spud in Trainspotting for my improvisational skills, but again I found the warming up exercises rather unpleasant due to an overabundance of 'pretend you're a tree' like exercises and as I was doing my radio show at the time it was an excuse to drop out. Anyway I'm pretty introverted so I don't know if I would ever have fit into the often brash and super-confident acting world.
Next: Moving to Edinburgh and experiments in film and music
Reader Comments (4)
You say you were never confident - but you did a lot of things!
Love the photo of you lying about on comics.
Dave
Hi Dave,
That's true, I think I was ok with creative stuff, it was everything else that was the problem!
Glad you like the photo :)
What's happened to the "I was a Swivel Chair" story?
I quite fancied a good read while bored at work and Google could only find a couple of the later episodes.
It's coming back - stay tuned.