I’ve foolishly got out of the habit of writing things to add here, so I suspect that I ought to try and fill the gaps of the last couple of months. Two main projects have absorbed the brunt of my creative time since the end of November. The one is getting Sinful Submissions sorted for publication, which I hoping to have completed within the next couple of months.

The other project, is well… somewhat more ephermeral.

The above picture will be easily immediately understood as being a sign of a minor Minecraft habit or lead to heavy confusion, depending upon the individual’s familiarity with that most successful of indie games from the last year.

Compared to some of the projects that I have seen posted online by fellow addicts of this latest digital narcotic mine is very simple, but it still involved the wasting of a significant amount of quality time. As with most people, I had been deposited by the game onto a patch of sand surrounded by an elaborate and rugged landscape of brightly coloured cubes and had immediately set to work punching trees and sheep to see what would happen. Clutching fistfuls of wool and wood with bloodied knuckles I was able to start interacting with the world in earnest and seeing what it might hold for me.

My first night in game was spent cowering in the dark in a small cave that I had hacked into the side of a hill, listening to the sinister noises as zombies and the like prowled around outside, much too close for comfort.

In time I developed the rudiments of a material culture in this new land, focussed on an excess of dirt and stone and just enough coal and iron to scrape by. My alien society of one, surrounded by day by the placid crowds of cows, sheep and pigs and the dangerously aggressive zombies, skeletons and creepers that come out at night was forced to focus heavily on its defence. The green hills that I was so free to wander in daylight became hostile to me when the moon rose and I was forced to spend my nights safe within the solid stone walls of the increasingly elaborate fort that I had built for myself, which can be glimpsed in the top left corner of the screen shot.

Over time I felt like there was something missing from the society that I was developing. I had architecture, agriculture, industry, mining, but what we were lacking was ritual. Where better to start than with that oldest of ritual forms… the stone circle?