Sunday 18 January 2009

The Abyss Gazes Back

Friedrich Nietzsche once wrote "if you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you."
Fred obviously knew what he talking about, because after two weeks staring at nothing while trying to come up with some radio sketches I got the same nothing back.

It's not been all bad though since I found a crate of Carlsberg left over from New Year's Eve. On Thursday I'd already managed to sink a few beers by 9:30 before going to my meeting with my old university lecturer to tell her I'd not done any work for her- I'm research assistant for her second book on Latin American narrative, and apparently the deadline for the manuscript was that day.
I was saved from a scalding, however, because it turns out academic writers are even worse at keeping to deadlines than I am, and so far only two chapters had been sent to her.

I've launched this blog on blogger.com since myspace has managed to fall behind on every technological development since 1998.
To those reading on blogger.com, hello! My name is Paul Hammond and I pretend to work in the media. Right now I am a research assistant for a book you'll never read, a film maker of films you'll probably never watch and a writer of... well, nothing really...
I was going to be someone two years ago when my pilot sketch show won the BBC Funny Hunt (more here...) and I was invited to send my scripts direct to their commissioners. Since then I've written exactly bugger all!
Please do follow my blog and read as I consistently fail to break into the industry and get older and older, and poorer and poorer.

Tomorrow I'm off to the university to check out the camera I'm going to be using for the filming I'm doing for them next week. It feels good to be doing some actual professional film work, regardless of its complete lack of glamour or decent pay.

I eventually managed to pay December's rent. No, Listerine didn't finally pay me my money. Instead I worked all Christmas at Marks and Spencer's- a tragedy that won't be happening again because I'm told I took too many absences to ever return.
Good!
Debenhams is far better anyway...

I'm working on paying January's rent by offering private Spanish lessons. I feel positively middle class now and, at £10 per session with one client, I should manage to claw back the cost of my degree in about eight years time.







For the backlog of this blog and to view some of my films etc, please go to www.myspace.com/swanhammond