Young Pines (Or How To Discover The Actual Meaning of ‘NSFW’ The Hard Way)

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The Young Pines organisation has just finished curating an exhibition of words and images at the Liverpool School of Art and Design. The work was taken from their self-published book ‘The Dream of the Fisherman’s Wife’, a collection of sexually explicit prose, poetry and illustration which uses mythology and fairy tales as a starting point. As part of the exhibition, visitors were invited to listen to audio versions of these stories and poems in a beautifully decorated ‘fantasy room’ lit by UV. And here’s one of them: ‘When Lucy Met Tumnus’ by writer, poet and storytelling genius Emma Hammond, with a sound design by Robin The Fog. But WAIT! Before you click on it I should point out that tt contains rather strong language and reasonably graphic sexual content. NOT suitable for the easily-offended, faint-hearted or readers of the Daily Mail! These people should probably click here instead, where they’ll find a nice comfortable link to a gentle, non-threatening repeat of ‘Bargain Hunt’.

Has that got rid of them? Splendid. Whack it on:

Emma says: “We chose this theme [for the event] as we were interested in subverting well known stories and themes. Some of the work is grotesque and uncomfortable yet in places it is quite beautiful.  We wanted to make the stories even more fantastical and in some ways absurd. We have had submissions from some of the most exciting young artists and writers from all over the country and the standard of contributions has far surpassed what we were hoping for.” 

Robin says: Sorry for just quoting verbatim from the press release, am dashing off for the holiday season and there’s no internet in Cumbria. Will do a more fitting tribute to Emma and the rest of Young Pines when I get back. In the meantime, hope you enjoy the piece, and for those of you at work or spending the holiday season with easily-offended, faint-hearted, Daily Mail-reading relatives who don’t know about your secret sordid double-life, here is an early demo of the sound design, so you can soak up the atmosphere at least without having anyone’s ears reddened:

You should almost certainly check out the Young Pines website and of course Emma’s own site . And there’s an interesting blog post about the project from Emma that you can read here. I note that the tags for this post are ‘bestiality’, ‘cocks’ and ‘prog-rock’, which means it should appeal to a worryingly-large number of my social circle.

Here’s hoping for more collaborations in the new year. Until then, Happy Christmas, everyone!