Me and Shelly von Strunckel
A day in the life of author Ed Hollis as he speculates on whether Roy Strong uses Mr Muscle or not and also, celebrates the amazing workshop he has been running.
Edward Hollis
Posted: 15:30:00 17/09/09
Shelley von Strunckel
I’ve discovered a new writer’s obsession – checking up on oneself on amazon.com. Its even better than Google: the rating for your book is updated hourly - a sort of compulsive literary celebdaq. Overnight, I shoot upwards from 3000th on the bestseller list to 1500th. Mid afternoon I’m selling better than the real architect’s bible, the New Metric Handbook. By evening, I’ve slumped in the polls to 2500th. This is becoming worse than last week’s Shelley von Strunckel horoscope obsession.
I spend an hour in the morning sitting in a café wearing brown corduroy, trying to be a writer. I get as far as a chapter outline for the next book – with lost of dots and ellipses indicating the points at which I haven’t got the slightest idea what’s going to happen.
But then real life intervenes, and I spend the rest of the day lugging drawing boards around the interior design department at Edinburgh College of art, in preparation for the arrival of the students on Wednesday. I bet that Sir Roy Strong doesn’t have to do this, I grumble to myself, as I apply Mr Muscle to the fifty second board.
Actually, its deeply satisfying, and very relaxing, after two weeks of an international workshop – 45 students from Germany, Turkey, Finland, India, and Switzerland, locked inot a youth hostel in the Old Town at the end of the Edinburgh Festival, and told to get on with designing something– anything – limited only by its duration. We got some wonderful answers: the five minute group devised and performed a flashmob, hanging masses of umbrellas off a bridge, and stopping the traffic .
The five second group devised a very poetic moment: five seconds of absolute silence, granted to one person, and one person alone, at the opening event for the Fringe. The five months group proposed flooding the entire city to see what happened, while the five millennia group walked around asking people what message they would leave for people five thousand years in the future. ‘Keep your legs warm and your head cold’ was my favourite answer.
It was a wonderful workshop, and you can check out all the videos they made of their work on youtube: IMIAD Workshop Edinburgh 2009. It was an entirely experimental, theoretical project – but it was a lovely exploration of how our built environment changes over time.
But I’m glad it’s over, and life is back to normal, Tomorrow, I spend an hour next to the photocopier, churning out handouts for the start of the new year. I guess it’s a literary production of sorts.
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