The Stone challenge was set back on 3 February 2024, when the nights were long and the days cold. It was meant to have been finished on 31 March 2024, when spring was beckoning and I hoped that GANTOBers would be out enjoying the thawing of the tundra. The best made plans etc.
“Action plans” are useful for a project, but only if they are scrunched up and read with crossed eyes after throwing the balled up paper in the air and seeing how it lands. If you follow that approach, the Stone challenge’s time to resurface is now, 23 November 2024.
The text of Stone had been submitted originally to Vipers Tongue Quarterly, as an entry for the inaugural issue, Spring 2023. It was not accepted. Rejection, of course, was the story of the late author Curt Finks’ creative life. GANTOB enthusiasts will know that a subsequent Finks submission was accepted a few months later (The A to Z of Curt Finks, VTQ, Winter 2024 issue). They will also know of Curt’s enthusiasm for drystone dykes the length of the UK.
Unfazed by the dismissal of Stone, and encouraged by the devilish instincts of The Benefaktor and Urs, I turned it into a GANTOB-style challenge and put it up on this blog. The task was to create a 200 stone story in 3 dimensions, at least five stones (storeys?) high, from a jumbled up sheet of words written in cuboid shapes. A lot of snipping and sticking has passed, deadlines missed, and other life events, but here is a completed entry, by Ariadne. It comes with some tropical twists that seem impossibly exotic sitting here in the heart of the Scottish Highlands, hunkered down during Storm Bert. Ariadne’s submission comes hot on the heals of her excellent pamphlet a week ago.
Over to you Ariadne. I suspect that the prize will take a few weeks/ months to mature, commensurate with your own process in completing this challenge. Hopefully patience will be rewarded all round.
Gillian Finks (daughter-in-law of Curt), 23 November 2024
PS in a monumental piece of apophenia, I have realised that the timing of this post could not be more apt, on the People’s Day of Death, when dozens of people are marking the loss of a friend or family member with a brick on a pyramid
STONE, by ARIADNE
When Gantob set the challenge of Stone earlier this year, I decided that not only would I have a go, but that I would definitely finish it! I had felt a little disappointed that I didn’t try and complete any of the challenges set last year, so was determined that this year would be it!
Gantob thought she was being in her words devilishly difficult when setting the challenge of ‘Stone’ but I could immediately see workarounds and short cuts to the challenge set. Instead of glue, double sided tape, and regular sticky tape would be my aides. My scissors, my guides.
The deadline was set for the 31st of March. I ignored it. Because isn’t that what Gantob is about? The smashing of Kreative Tyranny? Which, to me, means the smashing of deadlines [Editor: other readers may have different interpretations of this key GANTOB term – e.g. the strikt imposition of boundaries (such as green tea slips and hot beverage drinking times for kompleting a kreative task). As GANTOB (the projekt) is a kollective endeavour, all interpretations are valid]. I spent my weekends cutting and sticking, cutting and sticking, cutting and sticking. Tiny little bits of paper cut from the bricks would turn up everywhere. In the kitchen, in my bed, in my work bag…everywhere. I had no idea that all of the cutting out and assembling would take me so long (quite possibly the real reason for ignoring the deadline as opposed to any lofty ideas about smashing Kreative Tyranny).
But now it is finished. Sort of. I had planned to give it a ruined garden wall look but didn’t have the right sort of greenery on hand for what I wanted to achieve so just had to make do with a bit of passion fruit vine, some grass that I hastily glued on, and some abandoned snail shells for vibes.
And voila! Stone was built.
How to Assemble a Stone Wall, by Ariadne [Editor: think of it as a manual of sorts]
- Go down to your local print shop and get the bricks printed out and blown up a couple of sizes by the helpful yet harassed staff
- Start cutting
- Continue cutting
- Fold along all of the outlines of the brick to give it shape and make it easier to mould into shape
- Start assembling!
- Cut out three strips of narrow double sided tape (about .5mm) and stick it on the back of the bottom three sections of the brick. Unpeel the double sided tape and fold it into shape using a sewing pin to help the very tiny flaps of the brick stick to each other.
- Get a piece of regular sticky tape and wrap it over the top and back of the brick to make sure that the brick retains its shape and the top of it stays down
- Go back to the print shop and get another print out because you moved and may or may not have lost some of the bricks in the move. (Step is optional)
- Cut and stick some more
- Now that you have assembled all of the bricks it is time to kreate your wall! Again using double sided tape, stick the bricks in numerical order onto some foam board in the desired shape. Its up to you! And the story will unfold before you. Now in all of this cutting and sticking and moving, you may or may not have crushed one or two bricks leaving the word on them indecipherable and the sentence it belongs to a little confusing, but if you take the photo to show off your beautiful new wall from far away enough, no one will really be able to tell and in the grand scheme of things what does it matter anyway.
- Admire your wall and all of your hard work
- The End.
Ariadne, 23 November 2024
Except it is not quite the end. Ariadne’s submission is the only complete submission in the full spirit of the challenge, though missing the deadline by a country mile. It is a work of persistence, integrity and beauty. It also, with its tree tenants and obscured words, captures the ruins of Curt Finks’ literary career.
But what if somebody wants to read Curt Finks’ writing? That is, after all, one of my personal aims of GANTOB (the project), though my archiving has stalled and I am left struggling to know what to do with the documents, snippets and images that remain in my Curt Finks box. Well, luckily those scallywags Christine and Skellbert’s Pickles (sometimes Missiformation and Skellbert Pickles) came to the rescue, chasing the original submission deadline. Except they did none of the snipping, and only a modicum of sticking. But their entry is the only fully legible version of the original Curt Finks story, so I suppose that I should really thank them, and reward them with a unique piece of GANTOB art. That, too, will follow in due course, making use of these cold winter nights, starting with the aftermath of Storm Bert.
Gillian Finks and friends, 23 November 2024
GANTOB blog 