Thursday night wrote my last story for Barbara Campbell’s amazing 1001 Nights Cast project. My text – from the prompt ‘sowing apathy’ – was number 998, in good company with texts 997 (Tony White), 996 (Deborah Levy) and 995 (M. John Harrison) who all pulled out the stops to write great pieces.
Here are the first paragraphs of mine, the rest is here. A great speedy pleasure to write.
To a lot of people it felt like the end. Some said months or weeks, some even said it was only a matter of days. The big clock is ticking. That is what an asshole yelled out the window of a speeding vehicle that sprayed dirty water from a puddle all over her dress, its stupid Versace sirens scratching the air. The big clock is still ticking. Yeah yeah yeah.
To her it felt different though. More like a beginning in fact than an end.
At some point once its done I hope I’ll write some kind of looking-back on the project (at least on my own experience and participation in it) but I think that will wait a while. For now follow the tags below if you want to find other stuff I wrote here about 1001 already. I’m looking forward to the next three nights as Barbara closes the piece down after almost three years continuos work. I wish I could be there in Sydney for the closing event/symposia this weekend at which Barbara is joined by Helen Grace (Hong Kong), Marian Pastor Roces (Manila), Matias Viegener (LA), Frazer Ward (Northampton, USA) and Tony White (London) to discuss the project. Free.
The big final-night 1001’s webcast will be 6.45pm (Sydney time), Monday March 17th, with a live studio audience at Performance Space at Carriageworks.