What's up with the Liverpool documentary?

Echo and the Bunnymen (photo via band's account on X.com)

Wondering what's happened to Pool of Life, the Grant McPhee documentary, mentioned previously, that documents the creative scene in Liverpool in the 1970s, including Ken Campbell's Illuminatus! play and a wave of various bands, such as Echo and the Bunnymen and The Teardrop Explodes? 

There's an update at The Post (of Liverpool), and there's good news and bad news, according to the piece by Laurence Thompson.

The good news: There's a " '95% done' rough cut of Pool of Life, and it already lives up to his previous works — and then some." (The "current plan" is that Pool of Life will be the first of a trilogy of films). 

The bad news? "Sadly, if you want to see Pool of Life, you may have to wait. 'Funding has collapsed in the last two years,' McPhee tells me, describing this as an industry-wide phenomenon. If, say, the Liverpool Film Office are looking for something non-crime-related to invest in, great — if not, much of this unique and fascinating material will remain untold, despite the increasing surfeit of excellent memoirs like Simpson’s. And that really wouldn’t be good for the city."

New issue of Bodge released

The second issue of Bodge, the Discordian zine put out by the Liverpool Arts Lab, has been released. Go here to download a free PDF or to order a paper copy.

The format is the same as the first issue: Each contributor gets one page. My favorite when I made a first pass through the new issue was by Kate Alderton, the British actress who has been working with dreams. She has a lovely "dream seeding recipe" and I intend to try it. (I keep wondering if she has read either of two wonderful science fiction stories about dreams: The Dream Master by Roger Zelazny, also known as "He Who Shapes," and Brian Aldiss' story "Journey to the Heartland," reprinted in Aldiss' collection Last Orders.) There were other contributions I liked, too. Check it out! 

Daisy Campbell's new adventure

Daisy Eris Campbell, pointing the way for the rest of us. 

Daisy Eris Campbell is organizing a pilgrimage to CERN and Switzerland next spring, and everyone is invited to come along.

As I blogged recently, Daisy gave a long interview recently to a theater writer at a Glasgow newspaper. In the article, she mentioned her interest in synchronicities:

This idea of synchronicity and meaningful coincidence was first coined by Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung, whose well-documented dream of Liverpool was one of the inspirations behind the Liverpool School of Language, Music, Dream and Pun, where Illuminatus! was first performed. A bust of Jung by David Wright is set against stone taken from Jung’s house in Basel. Campbell is planning a pilgrimage to CERN, the Geneva-based centre for research into particle physics and the make-up of the universe.

“I feel it’s time to return a gift to Jung,” says Campbell, who is planning a trip with Liverpool Arts Lab, direct inheritors of the spirit of the old Mathew Street centre. “Again, why? We don’t really know, but it feels necessary.”

Daisy has now fleshed out her plans in her latest email newsletter, available here.  Excerpts:

First thing to consider: This will be a true pilgrimage - i.e HARD. It'll involve camping in mountains in April. It will be intense and in tents. You have been warned.....

For Illuminatus scholars you'll know that April 23rd was the day that they immanentised the eschaton. You'll also know that Eris was birthed in the UK via Illuminatus, staged on the site of Jung's dream of Liverpool - and given (as Alan Moore pointed out at the last performance of Cosmic Trigger) that all the current chaos and confusion has stemmed from muddling up the words 'immanentising' and 'immanantising' - it stands to reason that we must be at CERN to immanantise the eschaton on April 23rd, thus re-setting the world and ushering in the age of Grummet. 

The price cannot be 100% fixed until we know numbers - but a pretty close guess is £369 per person. This covers minibus & petrol, Eurostar, camping and all entrance fees etc. It is very unlikely to go up beyond £400. 

The deadline for expressing interest is Dec. 23.

Much more news at the link.