I throughly enjoyed the Tales Beyond Borders Conference last week.  A wonderful collection of people all with a passionate interest in the Fantastic!

And a big ‘Thank You’ to the organisers for letting a magician come along and present a paper!

My paper was entitled “The Fairy Goblet of Eden Hall to Hunting Mammoths in the Rain: experiencing the paraxial through performance magic and mystery entertainment”.  In my presentation I attempted to place my practice within a creative and playful space that is somehow neither real nor unreal, but happily placed in a grey space inbetween. It was great to air these ideas in public as it gave me a chance to really consider the place(s) where my interest in performance magic is coming from.  The paraxial is certainly one of them, but I ended the paper stating that it was really only part of the story.  I’m going to be presenting on other at Locating Fantastika in July.  The conference highlighted several others.  (Including that nagging ‘ethics’ argument that I need to write.)

I left the event charged with many new thoughts; interdisciplinary conferences such as these allow for an exciting sharing of ideas and I’ve come away with a book list as long as my arm – both fiction and non-fiction.

Anyway, need to get my head down – these books don’t read themselves and these chapters don’t write themselves!