Cyber warrior by Clement Chee
Back in the Nineties I began performing as a storyteller and performance poet. In 1998 I won the Bardic Chair of Bath and became the Bard of Bath. I started to perform professionally. One of my first bookings was for a Samhain Celebration at the Peat Moors Visitor Centre on the Somerset Levels, where I performed the story of Beowulf in a roundhouse while a storm raged outside. I got to spend a night - alone - in that roundhouse, which didn't even have a proper door - but snuggled up in my sleeping bag on the far side of the fire, I was toasty. The wind howled all night like a demon but didn't tear the thatched roof off. In the morning I awoke to a flooded Somerset Levels, fallen trees, etc. But the roundhouse was intact. I like to think I had placated the storm crone - perhaps the lonely spirit of the fens, a mere-hag, like Grendel's monstrous mother - with my tale.
Later that year, as the Millennium approached, I wrote a cyberpunk update of Beowulf, which I performed (from memory) at a show in a chapel in Bath with my storytelling friend, Kirsty Hartsiotis. And in the new year of 2000 I recorded it for my spoken word album, Global Warning, with added ambience from my friends Rae and Migo.
My version is inflected by all the Pre-Millennial-Tension that had been in the Zeitgeist over the previous year/decade/thirty years. As a member of Generation X I had grown up in anticipation of the Millennium -- a word that first entered my consciousness when the Millennium Falcon blasted across our cinema screens in '77. And now here it was. We sweated about that phantom virtual bogey, Y2K, and Britain celebrated with the 'Millennium Dome'. We had a Labour government, and things could only get better.
So, grab your synthi-mead and gather in virtual Heorot as your cyber-scop sings of Bio*Wolf, the greatest warrior that was ever manufactured:
LISTEN TO BIO*WOLF HERE
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