Preface

This is a book of Gas Cuntist short stories, each from the perspective of a different character. I’ve been writing for 17 years in some shape or form with the Rubberbandits, whether it be writing TV scripts, writing the outlines to prank phone calls or writing songs. But this is my first time writing words on paper as the sole medium.

With songwriting, you create music and production that tugs and sways at the listeners’ emotions. You set a tone and a feel that influences how the lyrics are perceived, which is great craic, but the listener is handing a lot of control over to the artist.

With television and video work, you use a lens to literally represent on a screen what the viewer will see. If I film a garden shed, for instance, everyone experiences the exact same garden shed as I intended it to be perceived. There’s very little two-way engagement; the artist commandeers the viewer’s imagination.

But with pure writing, just words, it’s a very participatory experience. I can describe a garden shed in as much detail as I like and you, the reader, will still see a different garden shed in your mind’s eye, based on your own experiences and interactions with garden sheds, and your acquired emotional relationship with garden sheds throughout your life. Positive, negative or indifferent. With the written word, no two people experience a story exactly the same way, because you, the reader, participate creatively.

The following stories are like scripts, or song lyrics, and you are the director of how they will appear and how they will sound in your head theatre. Unique to just you: no one else will experience what you experience. That seems fairly fucking class to me.

P.S. In the spirit of Gas Cuntist socially engaged art, this is also a colouring book. Each story is punctuated with a drawing that you are invited to colour in. There is also a lot of blank space for you to contribute and expand on the drawings yourself. Tweet them to me @rubberbandits.

YURT