tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-246676822012-01-20T09:37:37.346ZAS THINGS HAPPENAlasdair Grayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16098721517205763902noreply@blogger.comBlogger231100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24667682.post-72165375878515447182010-02-16T14:19:00.002Z2010-02-16T14:22:47.727Z

All babies feel they are the centre of the world, and slowly learn to share it with parents, neighbours, a locality and, as teenagers, perhaps a whole town. By then schools, newspapers and broadcasts are suggesting that only a few cities (London, New York, Washington) are IMPORTANT places where decisions are made bringing war and peace, work or unemployment. Many come to feel their home town is

Alasdair Grayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16098721517205763902noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24667682.post-76396486739412702952008-04-23T13:37:00.000+01:002008-04-23T13:38:45.842+01:00

A Modern Imitation of Goethe’s Faustby Alasdair GrayIn Three Acts with Prologue and EpilogueActs 2 and 3 are not quite complete. Asterisks indicate gaps in the writing.PROLOGUE BEFORE THE THEATRE CURTAINThe curtain is a rich dark blue. SOUND: Grandly solemn chords of religious music by Handel, Haydn or Bach. The curtains part enough to show three angels facing the audience in long robes the

Alasdair Grayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16098721517205763902noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24667682.post-31316759062625441732008-04-22T14:38:00.000+01:002008-04-22T14:39:38.747+01:00

Dear Sir, I do not think the following statement by the Prime Minister meaningless: "Coming from Kircaldy as Adam Smith did, I have come to understand that his Wealth of Nations was underpinned by his Theory of Moral Sentiments." The two books were intended to compliment each other, being halves of a view more easily seen by those growing up in a small, partly self-supporting commercial town

Alasdair Grayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16098721517205763902noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24667682.post-61760605306735592832008-04-21T14:45:00.001+01:002008-04-21T14:45:45.693+01:00

Dear Melanie Ramdarshan, In 1982 when my best novel and third book, (1982 Janine) was half finished, I offered it to Canongate (publishers of the first two) with a request for an advance of £1000, to buy me time to finish it. Canongate was then run on a low, sporadic budget. Its director said she might be able to give me that advance, if she could first get

Alasdair Grayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16098721517205763902noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24667682.post-80948974718331641402007-09-24T11:03:00.001+01:002007-11-02T13:28:16.605Z

Blind and a beggar sir, also a sot that tells tall tales. Who’d buy me drink did I not?Don’t sit too near – I stink but crave brandythough beer will do. Thanks! Long life to us both.How I became thus, you will hear.A woman caused it, Ann Bonny by name,a little tough sailor, same as me thenbut twenty years older. Dressed as a manshe’d swab decks, climb masts, reef sails, swear like therest of us

Alasdair Grayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16098721517205763902noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24667682.post-60100409306609349092007-05-29T12:02:00.000+01:002007-05-29T13:51:57.912+01:00

THE PIPESby Alasdair GrayScene: a small pub interior in a posh district, like the Wee Ubiquitous Chip BarCast: a barmaid, an ordinary customer, an Asiatic GaelThe barmaid is doing something barmaidenly, like drying tumblers. The customer is reading the sports supplement of a well-known newspaper.CUSTOMER: (without looking up from his paper) You know my brother, the artist?BARMAID: Yes.CUSTOMER:

Alasdair Grayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16098721517205763902noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24667682.post-18556280974702307692007-04-30T13:31:00.000+01:002007-04-30T13:39:15.973+01:00

Dirty stuff, dust, turmoil in Scots is stoor,Stofzuiger Dutch for hoover. Love, desire,lust are English, désir Francais, lust Deutscheso spirits, sprites, geists, ghosts inspire esprit.Great Yeats creates, sweet Keats repeats, eagerEdgar Poe try poetry games untildog shout, tree skin, water car meet in oneword, a curtailed world, so saw see we embark, go out into nothing like candle flames.

Alasdair Grayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16098721517205763902noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24667682.post-58398659031688238122007-04-03T17:00:00.000+01:002007-04-16T10:20:37.613+01:00

Dear reader of my blog,I have added nothing to it since November 22nd last year, except slightly to revise the title of my play Midgeburgers to Midgieburgers, and improve a few lines. This play is now being rehearsed for an Oran Mor Lunchtime Theatre production that will run in the week starting Monday 16th April, with The Loss of the Golden Silence, a shorter version of a play first performed in

Alasdair Grayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16098721517205763902noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24667682.post-87827313713827991492007-04-03T16:17:00.000+01:002007-10-09T13:20:09.543+01:00

A One-Act Play by Alasdair Gray first performed 16th April 2007 in the Play, Pie and Pint Lunchtime Theatre, Oran Mor. Revised with additions, 9 October 2007.The author thanks Larry Butler for permission to quote his poem about silence at the end. Characters:HE – Middle class, middle aged and eager to be genial.SHE – Middle class, middle aged, unhappy, and a furious knitter.JACK – A quiet,

Alasdair Grayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16098721517205763902noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24667682.post-78793744241284287872006-11-22T10:33:00.001Z2006-11-30T15:02:58.711Z

ORAN MOR ARTS & LEISURE CENTRE, GLASGOWAn Account of the Building and its Decorby Alasdair Gray HISTORYThis building was planned in the 1850s when Britain was the world’s only nation exporting industrial machines, and Glasgow its chief maker of steam-powered engines. Glasgow was then a cluster of burghs, each with its own town council. Govan on the Clyde’s south bank was nearly the richest,

Alasdair Grayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16098721517205763902noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24667682.post-1161686938037689842006-10-24T11:48:00.000+01:002006-11-16T18:05:16.835Z

GOODBYE JIMMYThis play was first performed at the Oran Mor leisure centre, Glasgow, in the lunchtime Play, Pie and Pint series. This ran from Monday 9th – 14th October, then transferred to the Jam House, Edinburgh from Monday 16th – 21st October 2006, in a version that presented THE HEAD as a lowland Scot. Anyone wishing to produce this play may do so without asking the author’s permission.

Alasdair Grayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16098721517205763902noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24667682.post-1159356112703819342006-09-27T12:21:00.000+01:002006-11-16T18:05:16.367Z

Reply to Editorial Assistant of The List who asked for a viewpoint or landscape that meant a great deal to me, and why I found it important.Dear Sarah Hunter,                From the twelfth floor of Glasgow University Library, or better still from the roof above it, good views may be had of all Glasgow and what lies beyond. On a clear day the view north is framed by the Kilpatrick Hills, the

Alasdair Grayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16098721517205763902noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24667682.post-1158569798299424572006-09-18T09:56:00.000+01:002006-10-21T15:59:19.660+01:00

Anyone is entitled to use this as a source of factual information.In 1994 I was called to Dunfermline by Elspeth King, former curator of the People’s Palace Local History Museum on Glasgow Green. A Heritage Trust, with money bequeathed by Andrew Carnegie for the good of his native city, had bought its oldest dwelling still in use – The Abbots House, separated by a kirkyard from the ancient

Alasdair Grayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16098721517205763902noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24667682.post-1152782141298759452006-07-13T10:15:00.000+01:002006-07-13T10:15:41.333+01:00

Dear Peter Burnett,                Thanks for your letter of June 29th, about the reading of Goodbye Jimmy arranged at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe on 13th August. I was given it yesterday, hence this delayed reply. Will you tell Andi Ross that I have two requests about the reading of Goodbye Jimmy he is arranging? Please, Mr Ross, use the script I have revised and improved up to 10th July,

Alasdair Grayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16098721517205763902noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24667682.post-1152194742106268902006-07-06T15:05:00.000+01:002006-07-06T15:25:06.016+01:00

Dear Exhibition Officer,You may not know of Alasdair Taylor, the Scottish painter who graduated from Glasgow School of Art in 1959. It is impossible nowadays – especially in Scotland – for an artist’s work to become very well-known, if it is not promoted by a well-known dealer: in which case the work may reach important exhibitions. It is hard for curators and exhibition officers to take

Alasdair Grayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16098721517205763902noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24667682.post-1152182557357974802006-07-06T11:42:00.000+01:002006-07-06T11:42:37.363+01:00

Dear Hamish,               I cannot just now tell you more about my memories of your Great Aunt Jean Irwin, because for the rest of 2006 I will be arranging them, with others, for a book called A Life in Pictures, where I hope you will read. She was kind and generous and we were friends to the end of her life. I visited her in the Helensburgh nursing home where she died, and we had a happy chat

Alasdair Grayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16098721517205763902noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24667682.post-1152111074911910732006-07-05T15:51:00.000+01:002006-07-05T15:51:14.916+01:00

ORAN MOR LEISURE CENTREIn 2003 Colin Beattie, Glasgow publican and property developer, bought the former Kelvinside (Botanic Gardens) Parish Church building, which had stood derelict for several years and began turning it into a leisure centre called Oran Mor – Gaelic for Great Music. The basement, entered from Great Western Road, became a night club, also used during the day as theatre for the

Alasdair Grayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16098721517205763902noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24667682.post-1152107613006338302006-07-05T14:53:00.000+01:002006-07-05T14:53:33.056+01:00

The HeraldLetters PageDear Sir,       Over two weeks ago the Herald arranged to give me an early view of the Glasgow Kelvingrove Art Gallery renovations, enabling me to write about these in the Saturday Herald. My article described a display called Conflict and Consequences in the main museum level, in which armour and weapons were shown beside or under horned and tusked beasts with a fearsome

Alasdair Grayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16098721517205763902noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24667682.post-1151577113513221882006-06-29T11:31:00.000+01:002006-07-01T20:13:35.620+01:00

Chiew Siah Tei’s novel: Little Hut of Leaping FishesI read the early versions of this novel’s first chapters in 2003, when tutor of Chiew Siah Tei in the Creative Writing Department of Glasgow University. Until then my knowledge of Chinese culture came from willow pattern plates, fine porcelain I had seen, scroll paintings reproduced in books, Arthur Walley’s translations of a Chinese classical

Alasdair Grayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16098721517205763902noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24667682.post-1150883445612336532006-06-21T10:50:00.001+01:002006-06-21T10:50:45.613+01:00

THE NEW KELVINGROVE MUSEUM AND ART GALLERIESby Alasdair GrayIn 1946 I was eleven and lived in Riddrie, an eastern housing scheme whose people thought it very posh, as I hope they still do. I usually spent spare time in my bedroom, at a small version of a senior executive’s desk my dad had made when his hobby was carpentry. Here I sat scribbling pictures and illustrating stories of magical worlds

Alasdair Grayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16098721517205763902noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24667682.post-1143755460353536522006-03-30T22:51:00.000+01:002006-03-30T22:54:34.836+01:00

30 March 2006This is Thursday morning. Last night Morag gave me your three bound publications and envelope of printouts of fourth. On the Street, Seven Week Filing Job, People I’ve Met When Working and Work (32 Post Office drawings) are very great achievements. Text and drawing perfectly balance each other. It has often been noted that if Arthur Sullivan had been a greater musician and W.S.

Alasdair Grayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16098721517205763902noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24667682.post-1143477756832568322006-03-27T17:42:00.000+01:002006-03-27T18:31:08.973+01:00

The following essay will appear with illustrations in "Free Association - a new publication for critical ideas around art practice" edited by Malcolm Dickson, and extended and edited as text of A Life in Pictures to be published by Canongate in 2007© Alasdair Gray 2006 I was born at the end of 1934 in Riddrie which with Knightswood was one of the earliest, best designed and poshest of Glasgow

Alasdair Grayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16098721517205763902noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24667682.post-1143213807888215452006-03-24T15:22:00.000Z2006-03-24T15:28:33.216Z

Monday 6th March 2006To the Chancellor, The Rt. Hon. Gordon BrownHouse of CommonsLondonDear Mr Brown,I strongly support two proposals submitted to HM Treasury by a working group chaired with Rt. Hon. Lord Smith of Finsbury in the chair. It aims to help UK establishments acquire original work by living UK authors. The proposals are: i) To extend douceur arrangement (which currently can be applied

Alasdair Grayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16098721517205763902noreply@blogger.com0