12 Wednesday Apr 2017
Posted in Arty stuff, Bloggy basics, humour, Loosely literary
Lots on the old plate this week, two paintings on the go, poems to write for a project I promised my little Chinese friend,
and a book to be getting back to getting on with.
So all you get is a pic of me as the Mad Hatter and a link to me performing, You Are Old Father Peter, from Parodies Lost (still available at £5) at the Scottish Arts Club’s tea party.
18 Wednesday Jan 2017
Posted in Arty stuff, Bloggy basics
Tags
celebrity, elsies, George R R Martin, Gorgie City Farm, narcissism, pigs, Selfies, smartphones, statues
So I’m at Gorgie City Farm and there’s this large sow stood on her hind legs, with her forelegs over the fencing, snorting sociably at the punters. I stand next to her and point my phone at us, but she takes this as a signal not to pose nicely but to start eating my left ear and the back of my ski jacket. After multiple attempts and a very wet neck, I give up trying to get a porker mug shot and try one of the other stalls. With wire separating us, my new model is rather insouciant and can’t be arsed to face the lens, so I end up with this compromise Elsie.
Elsie #8: Erica, pig
And now I hear all my reader asking, what the fuck’s an ‘Elsie’? I shall explain, with a few examples.
No one able to read a blog on a computer can fail to be aware of the ‘selfie’. Oxford English Dictionaries made it their Word of the Year 2013 and I wrote a potty-mouthed pome about it, which you can see me perform here.
Some years ago, the idea struck me of photographing some of the many famous performers and artists who come to Edinburgh during the Festival Season, but having them stand next to members of the public, locals and tourists. To heighten any comment that may be implied by the juxtaposition of the celebrated with the quotidian, the celebrity would be so far to one side of the picture that only an unidentifiable strip of their side would be included. Each piece would be titled, eg, George R R Martin and Eric Smith of Lancashire.
I never got round to pursuing this idea, partly because being a performer limited the daytime hours when I wasn’t abed or distributing flyers and touting the show.
As with most of my projects, the idea comes as something that amuses me, in some masturbatory manner, and implications, subtexts or artyfarty justifications follow later. I’m sure a lot of bullshit about the ontological, existential or portentous ramifications of this idea could be generated by a nartskool graduate. If I ever get to do the pics, I might even have a go at the exegesis (as we call it, in order to sound intellectual).
Elsie #1: Silvia, student, barista
So an equally ‘amusing’ idea struck me — the idea of doing a selfie, in which I only feature as a thin sliver of myself. And some would say that this degree of absence was justification enough for the concept. Mere nanoseconds later it occurred to me that if a picture of myself was a Selfie, a picture of (predominantly) someone else would be an Elsie (and don’t say you hadn’t seen that coming).
Trubble was, being a Luddite, having worked with computers since the early 70s, I was disinclined to move into the 21st Century and get a smartphone or even a tablet. I don’t want to be a zombie, walking round glued to a screen all day, basefucking and playing Angry Crush. And I would be worse than anyone else for this if once I started, believe me. It’s not that I have a disdain for such activities, more that I would be addicted from the get go.
Now, fortunately, your blogger is not well equipped with those ‘friend’ things that others keep going on about, so his wash’n’go Nokia Thickfone only needs topping up to the tune of £20-£30 a year. But all this does mean he has no camera device that will point narcissistically at the user when taking pics and can do neither Selfie nor Elsie.
Elsie #4: Nutan, restaurateur
Until now, that is. For a mere twenty post-Brexit pounds, the local crash converter shop had a cheap’n’nasty second hand smartphone of sufficient quality. So the project has begun.
It seems right to identify the Elses (obviously jargon is needed, so an Elsie is the picture, the subject is an Else) by first name and job description.
Elsie #5: Eric, statue
If possible I want a bit of suitable background, as with Nutan’s wonderful eatery. And, as with the statue and the pig, I shall call any unidentifiable character Eric or Erica.
I have eight so far. I also have a painful, swollen, lumpy left foot just now, so I may not get any more for a while. But maybe soon I shall show some more here and muse on the implications of this online installation of humanity (and pigs and statues and …?).
For now, I need to put my feet up.
28 Friday Oct 2016
Posted in Arty stuff, Bloggy basics, humour
Tags
collecting, Conceptual Art, humour, Michael Lacey, Mike Lacey, Paul Jennings, performance art, Snoopy, Thomas Wolfe, twitter, Victoria St
The other night in the wee small hours, on a sudden whim, I decided to follow someone on the Twitter. Many times.
I’d been looking to see if an old friend was on and forgot how many people in the world tend to share names. I’m lucky, Dai being a Welsh name and Lowe more typical of the East Midlands, the combination of the two is relatively rare and last time I looked (years ago, admittedly) there were only three of me: myself, a Canadian guy and a ‘flood control officer’ in Kentucky. The other two are not such prolific posters (ie media whores) as your humble correspondent, so I’m pretty easy to find; whether that is a good or a bad thing is up to you. We Zen Nihilists try to avoid value judgements.
Anyhoo, this retriggered the old obsession with the idea of collecting whole sets. It’s been said that it’s a more male tendency; a guy likes a performance of a Beethoven symphony, so he goes out and buys the full cycle of nine from some orchestra and conductor, while a woman is more likely to buy that performance and maybe check out other symphonies and interpretations thereof, one by one.
I explored one version of this idea, and any other things it might bring up or resonate with in a purely conceptual artwork, when I suggested that I would like to buy as many houses with the address 30 Victoria Street as possible. Riffing on Snoopy’s comment, Thomas Wolfe was right: you can’t go home again, I liked the idea of collecting umpteen houses with the same address of my Eighties Warwick home, which, by their disparate locations and despite their probable similarity in style (mostly being built around the turn of the 19th/20th Century), would represent an exaggeratedly futile exercise in nostalgia.
As with many of my ideas around 2002, this was designed to wind up my Goldsmiths-educated gf, la japonesa, with her rather fixed ideas of what could and couldn’t be conceptual artworks. With a straight face, I insisted that the act of buying the properties was the artwork and needed only to be known about by its ‘audience’. When she asked what could be done with the properties, I rejected the idea that each should be in itself an art gallery, as prostituting the work (I also rejected the idea that each should be a brothel, as too tasteless a joke for this high-minded piece). I did rather like the idea that each should be let out at well below market rates but only to families with the (randomly-chosen) surname of Brown.
As usual with these wind-up ideas, I then began to see all sorts of more serious resonances. The name of Queen Victoria ties in with a time of empire building, which the purchase of umpteen properties could be seen to represent; the streets are most often terraced housing of a comfortable, petit-bourgeios style, and so on.
I’m not sure what, if any, resonances there are in following every Mike or Michael Lacey on the Twitter. It took a while to come up with a name that has absolutely no relevance to anyone I actually know or know of. I rejected all female names (though there is one Mike Lacey that seems to be a woman), for fears of being accused of some form of stalking even weirder than usual.
So, as another of these performance art pieces, I’m following 121 Mike Laceys. So far only one has followed me back. One of them has the phrase everything happens for a reason as his tagline, and another admits to being a conspiracy theory nut. It’s intriguing to wonder what they make of a foodie-tweeting fruitcake following them and a hundred other people linked only by a name. Of course for the sake of purity I should have set up a Twitter account which only follows Michael Laceys, but if there’s one thing that I do allow to override my artistic integrity it’s my indolence. Now all I need is a title for the piece … any suggestions?
*The title of this blog refers to an Oddly Enough column by Paul Jennings in The Observer, c 1956, entitled Rush Me The Full Kit!, itself referencing marketing blurbs. You can’t beat a good obscure reference when you’re stuck for ideas! Democratic musings next Wednesday, honest.
28 Wednesday Sep 2016
Posted in Arty stuff, humour, Loosely literary, Reviews
Tags
Edinburgh, Fringe, Gladys Weems, humour, J B Priestley, ridiculous, spayne, spigwell, walking tour
[Another entry from our friends at the Spayne and Spigwell Advertiser, whose reporter, Gladys Weems, is still posting occasional notes from her visit to the Edinburgh Festivals in August…]
As a fan of the theatre, but unfamiliar with the author in question, I was fascinated to see a daytime event billed as They Walk in the City: A J B Priestley Walking Tour of Edinburgh. I had no idea there was any connection between Priestley and the city of Edinburgh, though I’ve no doubt he went there at some point in his life. That we started on Picardy Place, by a statue of Sherlock Holmes and the birthplace of his creator, Arthur Conan Doyle, only added to the intrigue. I knew the two men’s lives overlapped by some three decades, but was there some specific connection?
Well, if there was we weren’t told about it, as our guide, a charming Yorkshire lass who introduced herself as Jenny Villiers, didn’t let us linger long enough to ask. She led us straight to the crossing opposite the tram terminus. Warning us to take care as this was a dangerous corner, she led us across and onto Queen Street.
“Although we’re in Edinburgh, Scotland”, she said, “I want to take you on a very English journey, and I hope by the end, we’ll all be good companions. If you follow me to the right and down the hill, we’ll come to the Linden Tree pub at the end of Eden Lane.”
And so it began. After this cheery start, she seemed more keen to lead us on and encourage us to talk amongst ourselves, than explain anything. Any attempt to ask about what Priestley had to do with the streets, views and locations visited or passed was met with some waffle, seemingly unconnected, or a question to another member of the party. As well as that, she kept getting calls on her mobile phone, apparently from her boyfriend, who, she said, was a bit miffed that she was leading a walk on his birthday. She kept telling him that she’d make it up to him, “when we are married,” which was supposed to be happening very soon. A few of us speculated that it would be a surprise if it happened at all.
We turned back towards town up Dublin Street, and one or two of our number were beginning to get a bit fractious, demanding to be told exactly what any of these locations had to do with the Yorkshire playwright. But Ms Villiers merely asked, with some agitation, what the time was. This amused some of us, since we were actually standing outside Conway’s Timepiece Emporium, which had a number of clocks in the window, all agreeing that it was three thirty in the afternoon. When this was pointed out, Jenny insisted we had to get a move on, or else we wouldn’t be finished before the thirty first of June, which seemed an amusingly random exaggeration.
By now the party was giving up trying to understand what was going on and talking increasingly among themselves, which became more interesting than anything Ms Villiers was describing, even the oldest buildings in the New Town — the second time we passed them. When one of the party pointed this out, Jenny merely laughed and said, “Oh yes. I have been here before, haven’t I?”
At that moment a uniformed figure called out, “Are you lost, miss?” from over the road.
“No, no, inspector,” our guide answered, “just taking these good people on a tour; it’s a Fringe event.”
Well, things became no clearer as we went via St Andrew’s Square and along Rose Street. She pointed out strange but irrelevant things, like our reflections in the long mirror in Jenners’ window and three men in new suits who passed us as we crossed Hanover Street. In response to persistent questions about Priestley’s connections, if any, with Scotland, she merely said, “It’s an old country.”
I think we were all relieved when the thing finally came to an end at the Rose and Crown pub, where she said we should all go in and have a drink or six. As we got to the bar, there was a discussion as to whether we should buy her a drink — or even ask for our money back.
Then a lady from Farbridge (wherever that is) pointed out that we hadn’t actually paid yet, and, being British, we all felt guilty and turned to our guide to see when she was going to take our cash. But there was nothing to be seen of her.
So your correspondent can’t say the experience was a total waste of money, but nor can she work out what on earth any of it had to do with John Boynton Priestley. Life, eh?
21 Wednesday Sep 2016
Posted in Arty stuff, humour, Reviews
Occasionally it might be a good idea to use this blog to lay before an uninterested world, stories or thoughts or any general waffle what once got writted but never ‘published’ .. or even some things that did and want another airing. What I’m saying is that I can use old material to fill new gaps. So here’s an updated musing from five years back …
These opening lines are being written [on the 16th August 2011] in the Morning Room of the Garrick Club, beneath a bust of Charles Kemble and just to the right of a large Bombay Sapphire and tonic. With two dozen actors and musicians of yore staring down from the walls, including David G himself over the ornate fireplace, eternally and silently playing Richard III for all he’s worth, the setting is as opulent and sedate as the Chelsea Arts Club Billiard Room can get bohemian and raucous.
In the Tuesday-lunchtime Dining Room below, smart lounge suits and club ties are the norm, and conventionally, though not legally, the central table of this gentlemen-only club is still kept free of ladies. In SW3, by contrast, dress tends to be more casual, and, though ‘ladies’ are now welcome as members and active in all areas, there are probably a good few who would object to the nomenclature almost as emphatically as they would to being told where they could and couldn’t eat.
Now, there can be little doubt that drink flows as freely, and conversation gets as ribald and stimulating in either establishment when the stars are propitious, or that both sets of guest rooms have seen their share of comings and goings in the night. Indeed, the observant visitor will take note of the Garrick’s glass-encased statuettes, rather cheeky in more ways than one. But it seems more than likely that the contrast between the formal portraits on the walls in Covent Garden and the raunchy cartoons that grace the Chelsea staircase is a fair metaphor for that between the venues in general.
It’s equally plain that my erstwhile Auld Reekie home [the Scottish Arts Club, for the website of which this was intended] sits somewhere between these two stools. But where it sits well below them is in membership, and particularly in attendance. Were there to be any improvement, this writer would prefer its nature to tend to the boho end of the scale, but of course there are plenty of spaces in the Club and hours in the week to accommodate a variety of atmospheres, just as we currently enjoy a variety of events, from formal to burlesque.
Either way, it must first be acknowledged that our Club suffers from two major disadvantages. All the major London clubs have four-figure memberships and well-populated waiting lists; but then they do have, within a twenty-mile radius, a population about twice the heid-count of this whole proud Nation.
Then there is the question of accommodation. Leaving aside niggling questions of reciprocation, and even though we do offer members, their guests and our affiliates excellent deals at two city hotels, it cannot be denied that there is an added appeal to being able to get lightly blootered in a convivial bar and then simply lurch up the wooden hill to Bedrule (with or without the option of shenanigans … this is Edinburgh, after all … in the legendary words of the Morningside brothel madam, You’ll have had your sex).
So what can be done, despite these handicaps, to enlarge and perhaps slightly shift the demographic for the dear auld SAC? We are, after all, situated in a city with more than its share of intellectual and artistic-leaning folk, of all ages, and Scots bow to no other nation in their fondness for a blether and a dram.
Perhaps the first step is to get some of the existing members to use the place more regularly or in slightly different, more ‘casual’ ways. For, while the expanding range of special events never fails to scintillate, it would be good if some of us could sin till half past ten at least. Folks working in the King’s Road area regularly call into Old Church Street for a snifter on the way home and a few of those do actually go home after it. So it’s no use arguing that a private members club is only of interest to retired folks and layabouts like your correspondent, with too many daylight hours on their gnarled old hands. That such venerable (or feckless) members could still use the place for a quiet afternoon read or a natter would remain unchanged and no doubt quite a few would stay on to join the later revels and show the youngsters a thing or two about merrymaking.
And we should attract not just homeward-looking angels, but revellers bound for plays, movies or concerts — or even, if we can drag in a younger crowd, the bars and clubs. Not only are the Hall of the House of Usher, three theatres and two art-house cinemas in easy reach but so are all the sordid dives of Fear and Lothian Road, and what better way to start an evening than by foregathering in the well-stocked and reasonably-priced bar of the Scottish Arts Club?
But it has already been noted that, at lunchtimes and in the early evening, members have appeared, seen no one around, and moved on, only to be followed by another member doing likewise ten minutes later and perhaps one or two others at similar intervals: had they all arrived at once, a jolly coterie would no doubt soon have collected. As it is, few are happy to sit around just on spec, and who can blame them?
Now, after some insubstantial research, it can be stated that it is actually against the law of the land to hold people in the building against their will, much less nail their feet to the floor, even as a temporary and well-intentioned measure — so that idea has had to be abandoned.
The present writer has suggested that a few persons might be used to ‘seed’ the bar at crucial times. Indeed he did offer to sit at a table on otherwise quiet lunch times, behind a placard bearing the legend ‘will chat for food’. Some, who know him only too well, have suggested that a more effective strategy might be to reword it ‘will shut up for food’. Either way the basic principle of seeding might apply, even if said correspondent lacks the elusive spondulicks to purchase any food for himself on such occasions. And this can apply even moreso in the bar of an evening, when the starving artist can sit with a glass of sky wine and pretend it is the aforementioned juice of the juniper.
Perhaps, to save any such attempt at increased cordiality being a hit-and-miss affair which rapidly fizzles out, we should take our cue from the technological age. From ‘flashmobs’ and silent discos to the odd spot of rioting (not that we do that here, in the People’s Republic of Salmondia — which is a pity, as a new laptop would have come in very handy), those tools of the interweb ironically known as ‘social media’ might make a good starting point. Increasingly, members are online and at least a little techno-savvy. Some of us are even on that Facebook they have now, and it wouldn’t take long for other interested parties to register. Your humble and geeky correspondent would no doubt not be the only maven willing to assist the more technophobic in taking the necessary plunges.
The reason that such a site as Facebook might be preferred to e-mail is that one can sign on there without necessarily exposing one’s e-address or e-anything else one prefers not to expose to public gaze. And, rather than being bothered by regular ‘who’s-up-for-drinkies?’ mails, one can take a peek at the appropriate ‘page’ only when one feels inclined to see if anything is going on — or indeed to instigate goings-on. If one does want bothering, Facebook (other equally tiresome sites are available) can be set up to send one an email whenever another member posts on the Club page.
Indeed, many options present themselves with this wonderful and confusing tool. Rather than just ‘post’ one’s suggestion one can even ‘create an event’. Click the relevant button and say anything from ‘lunchtime chat’ to ‘late night sybaritic orgy’, specify date and time and Mr Zuckerberg’s little cash cow will send a mail to every member of the group (use this power wisely and sparingly, mes enfants!) and it will even count the positive rsvps for you. Clever cove, Johnny Yankee.
Well, an impulsive executive decision was made, mere weeks after this article was started (not to mention in a much humbler Dalry setting), and the initial steps taken. All an existing member of the Book of Faces had to do was enter Scottish Arts Club in the Search box at the top, and the page would leap into view. Rather cleverly, none of the items already posted by members on the main page would be visible until one was admitted into the ranks of the elect, which required, and still requires, the intervention of Yours Truly (probably one simply clicks the ‘join’ button and the system asks those of us in charge for approval — ah, the power, the power!). It is not even necessary to add such a panjandrum (or indeed any fellow member) as what is over-optimistically termed a ‘Facebook friend’, though all would be more than welcome to do so.
So, I said at the time, if you like the idea, why not give it a whirl? Once we have, say, 20 or 30 members in the group, we might see people extending invites right left and centre. And this is not an exclusively computerised idea of course. For, if it has the desired effect, word should get round even to the technophobic member or the more impromptu socialite that there is a much improved chance of finding jovial company and general good cheer at number 24. And not long after that, when word gets round the rest of Edinburgh’s havering classes, there will be a queue half way down Princes Street of literati and glitterati, begging to join the Scottish Arts.
I bid two clubs. Anyone care to raise?
At least, that was the idea. Ah, those best laid schemes and all that rot. Some of the members used the page and still do for contacts, notices, etc, but the quietness of a Friday night is only of use to the unsociable. Successive brochures still give the impression of an old folks’ home, however jolly, as it is very hard to show how many of those white-haired members have led lives of sybaritic and artistic excess, without, say, claiming that none of them is over 35. And now that the increasingly popular Chelsea has cut its affiliate ties with Scottish and Irish clubs, even that appeal is weaker. Indeed the Chelsea now has a splinter club, founded by Molly Parkin’s daughter, which is itself oversubscribed. Further thoughts may follow, comparing and contrasting other Edinburgh arty spaces, like the busy bar at Summerhall. But for now, some of us have novels to write …
07 Wednesday Sep 2016
Posted in Arty stuff, Loosely literary, Politics
Tags
A story started on a Virgin Atlantic bright ideas pad in September 2001 and finished today, just in time for the fifteenth anniversary of America’s ‘9/11’ (and the 43rd of Chile’s).
introduction, October 16, 2001
In the weeks following September 11th, one writer after another reflected on how it was no longer possible to write comedy, how glad they were not to have a book due out at this time (and how guilty they feel for thinking in that way), the death of the Manhattan Society Novel, the changed world post-wtc. Rushdie, McInerney, Woods, even Zadie Smith. Breast beating and garment rending for the literati. Emotional tourism.
Death of the novel, Zadie? It’s been lifeless since the 1930s. All those books we’ve seen since then are just ever-more-rotting Romero zombies, overly self-conscious, overly self-aggrandizing, slouching toward us, seeking to devour an ever-diminishing supply of flesh and brains. If September 11th consigns the Amises and Easton Ellises to their impatiently gaping graves, it’s dubious whether history will consider that its worst effect.
But what really rankles is this idea that the world changed radically on that dreadful Tuesday morning. Doesn’t it occur to these people that thousands died in Africa, Asia and, yes, Afghanistan, while untold others continued their pointless tired existences in sweatshops and plantations to stock the shelves of Greenwich Village — and all this on September the tenth, the ninth and so on, back for decades?
One hates to agree with Mr bin Laden, guilty or not, but he was not far wrong when he pointed out that America had suddenly had a taste of what millions of others regularly endured as part of their daily lives (and it was a point about which no paper or politician paused to comment, when condemning his speech’s remaining, more despicable content). In fact, he was hitting on the head a nail that not even these intellectual heavyweights wish to see and which all of us in the heretofore comfortably civilised world ignore at our peril.
No. The world didn’t change, it got even more the same. An unpalatable part of it just burst into your lives, my friends. If you can’t write humour now, surely your doing so before was an act of gross insensitivity. But far from the comic becoming impossible or even unsuitable, on September 11th, to a cynical nihilist like this writer, the world just became even more blackly, sickeningly funny.
Justification
by Dai Lowe
But what’s the use of spending your life fleeing the City of Destruction? What about your inalienable right, Thirteen Provinces? His mind unreeling phrases, he walks on doggedly. There’s nowhere in particular he wants to go. If only I still had faith in Words.
John Dos Passos, Manhattan Transfer
Friday, September 14, 2001: afternoon
1
… so let’s go where we’re happy …
I was walking past the cemetery when I was attacked.
Taking a cab from Oak Grove station had occurred to me but, tired as my legs were from a day in Boston, the only taxi waiting there was a big black number festooned with an American flag over each wing and driven by a bearded guy in a cowboy hat.
I didn’t want to be driven back to Laura’s house by a refugee from The Dukes of Hazzard. I didn’t want the inevitable conversation. I was tired.
Twenty minutes later the same car passed me as I tried to cross Lebanon.
Nearly didn’t notice him; nearly got myself killed.
There was a low wall on the other side, the perfect somewhere to sit.
I had to get this written down before the inspiration caught its own black and white cab and sped away. Damn muses. Always sneaking up on a guy.
Saturday, September 8, 2001
2
Rejoicing city that dwelt carelessly
—Back lots and goods yards, small diners and kwikmarts, noonday sun aimed straight down canyon streets. What is this knack of finding featureless shadeless backstreet routes in the world’s most fascinating cities? Even Forty-second Street (just direct your achin’ feet) is dug up and dullsville west of Seventh Avenue.
—How did we end up walking such a long way round, end up sweating and snapping, when I was clearly an irritant from the moment we met up the night before? Trust us to be in town, trying to patch things up, in the week that the Fates, Furies and Fuckers are gathering for a special shindig.
———Keep an eye on the boat. For fuck’s sake don’t just stand there.
—Fatigue and stress and paranoia. Visions of buying two for the two-thirty just in time to see it pull away from the dock. As if she was about to hold a rope and stop it getting away. She could at least have looked as if she cared.
—A three hour trip around Mannahatta. Skyline of warehouses, skyscrapers, Liberty, bring me your huddled masses, Empire State and Chrysler and always those two tall towers, love-’em-or-loathe-’em symbols.
—Bridges are also symbols. Brooklyn, Manhattan, Queensboro, Triborough. The United Nations, Yankee Stadium, the Bronx and Staten Island too. So many photo opportunities, ‘scrapers, bridges, happy tourists. She even smiled for the camera in front of the girls in wheelchairs and tension eased a little to the throb of the engines and the captain’s commentary.
—Rounding North Mannahatta back into the Hudson, sighting the GWB. The Palisades on the Western shore, a vision of what the island was but remains only at its northern tip. The rocky wooded hills, straight out of Fenimore Cooper, that existed only to be flattened. Fill in the waters, level the lands.
—I mastering thee …
Friday, September 14, 2001: morning
3
I’m not looking for New England
Any customers wishing to travel beyond Richmond or Chicago, please note all tickets are sold for today, tomorrow and Sunday.
Crossing the East River under a leaden sky and always in the distance a pall of white dust and smoke over Wall Street.
Thirty-five years of age and this is the first time I’ve been on a train. So comfortable, too.
Over Long Island, Friday suburbs looking quiet and normal on a gray day.
Through New Rochelle, home of Rob Petrie so long ago; but everything is new today. New Haven, New London, Newport, as we speed through Connecticut and into Rhode Island.
It’s cost me my job! The knock-on effects will last for years. The unhappy girl reads Rowling, while I digest Dos Passos.
And everything is old today. Thoughts of old London and memories of my old Warwick home, as we pass through an American version, bound for Providence, where Jenny began her journey from Dave, from married man to spinster.
The Fall colours are so vivid, the shore on the right, the trees on the left, the changing of the seasons. So sad that tragedy should lead to this discovery. Every cloud, I guess…
Speed well through Massachusetts, westwoods and open lands, to the city named for my birthplace, whence Hooker, Stone and Cotton sailed away.
My reservation’s for a different train. In all the confusion and time changes …
I wouldn’t worry, Madam; in the circumstances, we won’t press charges.
And now to find my way to Melrose, to wait for flights to recommence.
Stateless. Refugee.
Sunday, September 9, 2001: am
4
The Burthen of Nineveh
—Lloyd Wright Guggenheim spiralling skyward. Within, the disappointment of a rehang, a limited experience, restricted access; we wander round what little we are able and allowed.
—We too go round and round, and if we spiral it is only down. No rehangs here, unspoken frustrations of her week before mocking surfaces uneven, and distorting images.
—Les Demoiselles d’Avignon ne déçoit pas, though even MOMA has some closed galleries, some rearrangements, some special show in the offing. Like some sort of cusp.
—And in the afternoon the Met. The luminous, the sense of space and possibility nailed down in oils, by Bingham, Homer, Cropsey, Cole …
—Records of promises, hopes and dreams, free from all awkward truths and transgressions.
—Land of the ocean shores! land of sierras and peaks!
Thursday, September 13, 2001: morning
5
and nothing to get hung about…
Parting is such shrugged sorrow.
After the Grand Central oysters a few days back, Penn Station coffee bars appropriately plain, thoughts and regrets safely half-spoken, as she leaves for the city of brotherly love and academic conference.
Manhattan’s streets I sauntered, pondering.
Somewhere to sit, to write, to sketch? Central Park seems obvious, the subway beckoning me down.
Hurry, get on, now it’s coming. But it ain’t stopping, not till halfway to Harlem. No one, not even Duke, told me they don’t all stop at every station.
Heading up Manhattan, opposite a huddle of homeboys having the most intelligent conversation of the week.
——It ain’t us they was attacking, it was the military, the moneymen, the ones who screw their lives like they do ours and always have. World Trade and Pentagon, man, not Harlem or Marshall Heights.
Strawberry Fields forever. Lennon’s corner in the park more than ever a focal point for grief and floral offerings. I stroll around, say hi to folks, exchanging sympathetic looks. By The Pond I take my rest.
—— The answer is simple, says the young Jewish academic at my side. Drop a nuke on Mecca, that’s all we gotta do. They’ll soon come into line then. It worked with the Japs in ‘Forty-Five.
Nothing is real.
Sunday, September 9, 2001: pm
6
Just direct your dancin’ feet …
—In Times Square, at the end of a normal day, the buzz of the people again around, under trillions of watts of selling, turning nightdark to perpetual day.
—Broadway burger bar, non-global franchise, culturally less imperial, brings the illusion of greater satisfaction, moral and gastronomic.
—Give me such shows. Give me the streets of Manhattan.
—Fortysecondstreet cinema shows feelgood film. Aussies and a Scot on Parisian rooftops and in the eponymous red mill. Operatic tragedy with rocking soundtrack, sends us out smiling into the New York night.
—The greatest thing you’ll ever learn …
Wednesday, September 12, 2001: afternoon
7
One more block to Jordan
They closed off lower Manhattan. Even Little Poland was no longer accessible, let alone Raoul’s. The police tape stretches down the centre of E14th St; one block more and we’d be homeless.
What happens now?
Everything’s on high alert. I don’t recall a time when terrorist atrocities have followed in quick succession, nor one when people don’t assume they will. Only armies, only oppressors, only militias on their home turf have the resources to do that.
And internets and phones are down, family at home not knowing, though doubtless confident their relative would scarce be up and about at such an ungodly hour.
Weeks later folks will say, surely this showed her how fragile life can be and made her think she’d best come back? Just as likely it made her think it too short to spend with this dumb jerk.
Monday, September 10, 2001: afternoon
8
You remind me of a man …
—The rain was bouncing so hard off East 14th Street that guys’ knees were getting wet from the inside of their pants. Even so we decided to make a run for it.
—The entrance to the L was only a few yards away from the Union Square Inn and we’d been waiting in the lobby so long that other guests tipped us a dollar when we held the door for them.
———This ain’t gonna let up, she said. ——C’mon.
———Okay, I replied ——Forget about going up tall buildings for today? Sky could be kinda dramatic though.
———If I want dramatic, I’ll go see a Broadway show. From tall buildings, I want vistas.
———Democratic ones? I asked, as we started to sprint.
———Go careful, said the real porter.
—We did. She hit the dry but steamy subway entrance ahead of me. So far ahead, I didn’t see how she skirted the turn in the stairs any more than I noticed it was two inches deep in rainwater.
—Her laugh was unsympathetic. My shoes and ankles were drenched.
———Democratic vistas? she queried.
———Whitman, I explained. ——Walt Whitman.
Tuesday, September 11, 2001: afternoon
9
a black mouth with a throat of light
——They hate us. They all hate us, Mike.
——If they all hate us, why does everybody want to come live here?
Answer me that, Jim.
Each day, we’d left the hotel, sometimes for breakfast here in Café Piccolo, and looked down Third Avenue, which gave us a glimpse of the Towers we lefties despised so much. Now two towers of smoke and dust and death hang in their place, like hungry ghosts, waiting for the friendly wind that would blow them out to sea instead of back, deadly, into Mannahatta.
And now the guys at the counter drink stewed coffee and see life ever more in black and white.
No one wants British blood, the risk of Swisscheese brains in decades’ time too great even for those who just had a building fall on them. But prion-free locals queue around the blocks, just as they volunteer in other ways, so we feel satisfyingly surplus to all requirements except concern.
So little we can do, so much closed down, we sit and talk and think about it all. Raoul’s now as off limits as it would feel inappropriate, we end the momentous day with gigantic platters of pierogi, gołąbki, and bigos in Little Poland round the corner on Second.
Who’s on First? Who cares?
Monday, September 10, 2001: evening
10
Seven minutes. Seven seconds. Seven hours
I joke, if he’d played eight more hours of encores …
How did we find you, Piano Man, in your firstfloor club in old SoHo? Some what’s-on guide, listed under jazz, one passion still shared?
How did we like you, Piano Man, with your bop-based boogie rhythms, your rolling riffs, your moody melodies? So good the crowd called out for more, well past the chimes at midnight.
Cocktails for two and planning what to do. Raoul’s, where your colleague’s cousin was chef, booked for tomorrow night. Empire State preferred to nearby WTC, for Art Deco styling and Central Park views. Determined to rise, determined to shine, be up and out by nine.
How did we leave you, Piano Man, a latenight balmy evening saunter back to Union Square, that fateful kilometre, which then seemed but a prelude to a thaw, a friendlier farewell …
Oh, well.
Tuesday, September 11, 2001: morning
11
a thing that none but fools would keep
You wanted a New York story. We talked of Raymond Chandler, Damon Runyon, Truman Capote, Steinbeck and Dos Passos …
Well, I was sitting on a hotel bed at eight-fortyfive on the morning of Tuesday, September the Eleventh, Two Thousand and One. She was in the bathroom. I heard the plane go overhead.
——Bloody Hell, that guy’s flying low, I said but she didn’t hear me.
As she flushed the john there seemed to be a dull thud in the distance. But I only put the tv on when she started to run the shower. It was going to be a while before we got out. So much for the early start to go up the Empire State on a clear and sunny morning.
The news was already breaking, commentators speculating. Then what looked like an explosion in the second tower. Five more minutes of guess work before a viewer rang in and said she could swear another plane came in behind the towers from the right of the picture. So they reran the tape. She was right.
So then we knew it was no accident. And I knew that the story, if there was one, couldn’t be light confection. No tales of the city. Manhattan Transfer, USA.
end
31 Wednesday Aug 2016
Posted in Arty stuff, humour, Music
The Edinburgh Festivals have ground to a halt, as has your blogger, thanks to an attack of ‘Fringe Flu’, so you’ll have to make do with more reviews from Gladys Weems of the Spayne & Spigwell Advertiser.
My final Spayne & Spigwell-related show of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival was Wyberton’s own Molestrap Theatre’s production of Yog Sothoth and All That, a revival of the 1975 ‘musical’ by Mercutio Thripp, at Fringe Venue 473, some disused crack den in Polwarth, I think it was.
Thripp, better known as the powerhouse at the back of heavy metal band Garbald Messidge, is no doubt a more accomplished drummer than he ever was a playwright. Then again, so is our cat, and she’s dead.
A self-conscious riff on the works of H P Lovecraft, both the humour and the creepiness in this ill-advised resurrection (not to mention the plot, of which there is precious little to mention) plod more than Noddy’s policeman friend after a heavy meal.
The young cast struggled personfully with the leaden dialogue, though Rachel Snitterpike, as Sandra Cthulhu, managed enough bathos to elicit general sympathy at the lack of rôles more suited to her probable talents.
It doesn’t seem a good idea to have a percussionist (if we may so glorify Mr Thripp, which indeed we may not) write all the songs for a theatre piece, though others have displayed an awareness of melody and lyricism. Then again, it was probably a blessing that we couldn’t hear many of the words of songs like I’m Lurking at Your Threshold, for the thrashing of drums and bonging of gongs.
This reviewer, one of only three people in the audience and the only one to stay to the end (professional dedication, or what?) Can only express the hope that the poor audiences and crippling losses endured by the company will deter them from their intended revival at the Molestrap.
No stars.
In fact, fewer than no stars.
Back home (as she failed to get into the Edinburgh Art Fest), the Cumbeslobodian Disfigurative painter, Ramitabal Spon, will be at the Flange Gallery next Friday, for the opening of her first major exhibition in the UK. And probably her last.
Spon (57) is little known outside her native land, but Spigwell’s Cumbeslobodian community invited her over, apparently before seeing any of her work. Apparently, their residents’ association supports fully the local council’s decision to put a warning on the door, display no actual posters of her work and issue free sick bags to all who do visit.
The Advertiser may run a review of the exhibition if a reporter can be found willing to see it. Some images can be found on what is known as the ‘Black Web’, but we cannot recommend highly enough that you don’t try to find any.
25 Wednesday May 2016
Posted in Arty stuff, Bloggy basics, Loosely literary, Music
Tags
acolyte, Cinematographer, Editor, Graphic Designer, humour, Illustrator, interns, J K Rowling, Music director, Nudity, Rich patron, Rich widow, sits vac, situations vacant, Tchaikovsky
I need help.
People often tell me this, usually in quite stern tones. It’s amazing how perceptive they can be. I assume they can tell that I have so many brilliant projects on hand (see The Labours Left Unfinished above) for which I need assistance, not to mention a shitload of encouragement and reassurance.
Now, I believe, it is quite trendy these days for people to work as unpaid interns, like slaves with a side order of hope — hope that one day they will be able to use the experience gained to enhance their own work, or at least to soup up a cv (resumé). Famous folk and conspicuous companies have young graduates queuing up for the chance to make them tea or shine their shoes for forty free hours a week.
I could use a few of those eager mugs volunteers. Why not apply? You could be adding yourself to the long list of famous people who started out apprenticed to a now-forgotten master. You won’t be, but you could be.
Because it must be admitted that sentences like, I helped Dai Lowe make a film (movie) or I drew the pictures for Little Mr Poonlop on your cv (resumé) is not exactly a big career boost, even compared to I made tea at Pinewood Studios or I licked J K Rowling’s hallway clean. Indeed, it could count against you, and could even land you with years of expensive therapy sessions.
But, if you do think you could help, read on. I have quite a few vacancies. All interns would also be there to offer me encouragement, hugs, moral support, tissues, immoral support*. Ideally I need young people, probably undergraduates or recent graduates, though a university education is not essential, as some very bright people don’t go that way. But the basic need is for people who are intelligent, creative and open-minded enough to understand, criticise and contribute to some of the work, while still being naive and impressionable enough to think my ideas are amazing (or even half-adequate). Though anyone from 16 to 96 can apply, I find people who’ve reached the advanced age of 25, or who’ve just achieved a greater level of understanding and cynicism, usually see through me far too quickly. Some even begin every other sentence with, What you should do here is …
I want … no, I need people who will draw the pictures I want but can’t, point the camera where I ask while I perform, compose and play the accompaniment I need, without trying to change any of it into something completely different (they are more than welcome to go away and make that something themselves later; I’ll even hold the camera or make models for them, but not while they’re on intern-duty). And most of all though they’re welcome to laugh at my jokes (in fact that may be a prerequisite for the post), but I don’t want them to smirk or laugh with derision at my instructions, even if they are otherwise following them to the letter. And even more most of all, while I may welcome their admiration and blind devotion to all I stand for, there must be no actual adoration, or attempts on my devout state of bi-celibacy. My heart and all the naughty bits that go with it are spoken for, albeit by one who would prefer never to be within a parsec of them again. Hands off. Having said that, I doubt this proscription will be any trouble whatsoever, even for the most admiring assistant.
So, what jobs, what glorious opportunities for experience and self-improvement can I offer? It is obvious that there will be candidates able to fulfil more than one of these rôles. Let’s be honest, I only require reasonable competence in musicianship or illustration, and anyone can point a camera (I even provide a tripod) and tell me how brilliant I am (some even with a straight face). And more than one person could be helpful and fun in any one of them. So there is no one-to-one match: we could be assembling a team like the Avengers or it could all be done by one, like Robin to my Batman (no costume is required or provided).
Music Director: to work out what bloody chord I need on the ukulele for my Window Cleaner number in time for the 2016 Edinburgh Fringe for a start. And to work out the accompaniment for A Girl in a Thousand. And then accompany me at gigs or in the street, on the instrument of your choice, at least until we get moved on. No folkies need apply.
Cinematographer: short films shot at home are usually done with the camera(s) on a tripod or a surface, especially those that need no camera movement or zooming shots. But not only does location work often need more care, but there’s the fear of someone running off with the camera while I’m a few metres (yards) away — and, more to the point, I’d feel less of a pranny (schlemiel) if I’m not doing it all alone!
Editor: my writing is brilliant and inspired, as you can tell, but still, for some reasons, it gets little praise and less publication. I am very well aware that the artist, in any form or medium, is often the least well equipped to judge the work objectively, so I need someone to read and critique. I will of course throw the requisite prima donna hissy fit and refuse to accept that you’re right about anything. But you will be very welcome to say I told you so, whenever the opportunity arises.
Graphic designer: the luvofmelife is one of many people who regularly point out
that though I am fairly competent (given sufficient time and paper) at producing artworks, my ability to design webpages, book covers, magazine layouts and the like is utterly woeful. This does not hurt me one bit, because I have never been under any illusions to the contrary. Back in the day, la japonesa designed me a brilliantly elegant business card, and I thought how easy she made it look. It isn’t, as many abortive attempts since then have proved. So someone with even the slightest flair for laying things (but not their employer) out would be more than welcome. And similarly …
Illustrator: I can draw naked people and even paint the odd landscape reasonably well, which is good enough for me, but book illustration, especially for the kiddies, is a different skill, which is (a) beyond me and (b) a far from suitable setting for sketches of nudey ladies. And Mr Poonlop and his many possible sequels cry out for some well-drawn, not-too-stylised pictures, showing the characters in hilarious situations all over Paris. The candidate is more than welcome to hire models and travel to France to research the backgrounds, but not I’m afraid, at my expense. Unless someone takes up the next job …
Rich patron: Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, as a budding composer, was spotted by rich widow and businesswoman, Countess Nadezhda von Meck, 
who decided to sponsor him for thirteen years, so that he could concentrate on composing. And she, a noted recluse, did this on the condition that they never met. Now. If anyone wants to give this a go in the case of a wannabe geriatric prodigy, please write now to arrange the standing order (or one bulk payment, the choice is yours). The not-meeting clause is far from essential, as long as you don’t want to influence the works done (or complain about the lack of them: the man of genius, as Aristotle tells us, is doing most when he appears to be doing least: that’s my story and I’m sticking to it). I usually find that most people who do meet me insist on a not-meeting-ever-again clause in our general association, so writing it in would be a mere formality. Again, a rich person who wishes to fund my life while fulfilling any or all of the other rôles would be welcomed with open arms (I’ll even take a bath before opening them). And even without money or talent, you could fill the most important rôle of all …
General acolyte: even if you can’t do the more technical stuff, you could just follow me around, letting me bounce stupid ideas off you, going Wow! at regular and carefully chosen intervals, fetching me drinks or snacks, even buying them for me, if that makes you feel good. Just chat and listen and be there (oh, ye gods, I’m so fucking lonely!).
Only joking … or am I?
Apply now. You’ll be sorry you did.
*Well, immoral support would not be necessary; I just couldn’t resist the gag.
11 Wednesday May 2016
Posted in Arty stuff, Loosely literary, Music
Tags
It’s been a quiet week on Grieve-Not Lake.
Yes, I only just realised that Garrison Keillor’s Wobegone has the same root. I used to know his son-in-law; maybe I could ask if the Minnesota-China reference is intentional.
Anyhoo, apart from climbing one of Embra’s seven hills, sorting out round three of the Scottish Arts Club short story competition and a few other admin tasks, it’s been a week of poetry and disappointment.
Disappointment because the Traverse Theatre didn’t want the play I may have mentioned in previous blogs. And poetry because I is trying to write me a sonnet for a competition to mark the four hundredth anniversary of that there Shakespeare bloke.
I think I got me a sonnet, but I can’t share it with you, gentle reader, because it can’t have been published anywhere before them lovely judgey people sees it.
But I have scribbled another piece. I have a book or two in my bog (bathroom), poetry for shorter visits, short stories and novels in case of dyssentery, and one of them is a collected pomes of Philip Larkin, him of They fuck you up, your Mum and Dad fame. And I was reading one from 1958, called Home Is So Sad, which goes like this …
Home is so sad. It stays as it was left,
Shaped to the comfort of the last to go
As if to win them back. Instead, bereft
Of anyone to please, it withers so,
Having no heart to put aside the theft
And turn again to what it started as,
A joyous shot at how things ought to be,
Long fallen wide. You can see how it was:
Look at the pictures and the cutlery.
The music in the piano stool. That vase.
and that, in turn, set me off to write this …
Starting from a Line of Larkin
The music in the piano stool
included ‘Furry Liza‘, and (so
typical of me) I tried to learn
the piece, with
x no prior knowledge,
x no technique,
x no practiced scales,
x no finger exercises.
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxDiscerning that
the tiny numbers had to indicate
the fingers meant for notes and where
upon each stave to find a middle C,
precocious logic worked out
all the rest.
xxxxxxxxxxxxxAs always
what was lacking was determination:
determination and a willingness
to take instruction, practice. And,
xxxxxxxxxxxxI guess,
the slightest smidgeon of an aptitude.
Whatever failings may take on the task
x of justifying mediocrity,
x of excusing poor results,
the simple moral still remains:
reason alone doth not an artist make.
x And there, bound in a nutcase,
x you have the story of my life.
10/5/16
My main activity just now should be learning the ukulele daily (if not gaily). I need to play it in my turns for the Edinburgh Fringe in August, and, as this video explains and demonstrates, I can’t.
Meanwhile I also made a bit of progress on a more salacious and silly bit of epic verse, the beginning of which I shall leave you with for now. Hopefully the whole, disgusting saga will be available one day …
Cheap Thrills
I sing the young lad’s apish essence,
The piquant joys of adolescence;
With lazy bones and potty mouth,
And brains inclined to travel South;
That fascination with one’s bits
That stiffen at the thought of tits.
Young Hamish, aged about fifteen,
Invented a ‘cheap thrill machine’
He showed his chums, with great elation
His novel aid to masturbation.
With straps around his waist and thighs
It could adjust to any size.
Likewise the sleeve around the Hampton* —
As soon as it was firmly clamped on,
Small servo motors did the work
To give a steady, rhythmic jerk,
Perfect for leaving both hands free
To deal with the pornography
to be continued.
*Cockney rhyming slang for ‘prick’, from the place near That London called Hampton Wick.
27 Wednesday Apr 2016
Posted in Arty stuff, Bloggy basics, Card Games, Food, Music
Tags
art, Atahualpa, Bings, Card Games, Conceptual Art, Cuarenta, Edinburgh Fringe, Food, George Formby, Nudes, Oil shale, Painting, Paperweights, Po' Boys, Selfies, Street Food, Ukulele
I can beat you at procrastination the day after any day
[probably from Current’s Turn, the never to be written sequel to Fardel’s Bear (see previous blogs)]
Hello again. Last week I suddenly decided I’d bored myself, and probably any readers, quite enough, describing my unfinished (or even unstarted) dramatic works, and I’d give us all a break before finishing this list of unachievements with the visual, plastic, concrete and edible stuff. The old website for Lucidity Ltd (making things clear …) will show some of the things that have been made and even, occasionally and cheaply, sold.
The Finnish language has (possibly) a tense called the past potential used for things that could have happened but didn’t. When I describe things below, just imagine I’m using such a tense in English.
visual art
Repeated attempts to do justice to the human form, interesting though some have been, were getting stale, and life classes, with their unpredictable poses and viewpoints, were no longer the place to try out new techniques. Not wanting it to just be some sort of hobby (my time is wasted in too many ways as it is — who said such as this blog? – the cheek!), if I ever again need to produce a particular work or practice a style, I shall try to scrape up the money to scrape up a model of appropriate size, shape and sex. Never say never again, I suppose.
The latter, with their fascinating backstory and varied appearances (from a giant fan to a miniature Uluru) speak of history, geological, environmental and social, as well as being a forerunner of the controversial modern practice known as fracking; and provide a damn good excuse to experiment with techniques of application and abstraction on different scales. I’ve even sold one!
With all these things produced down the years (yes, the ones that are finished), comes the pompously illusory need to do a retrospective exhibition. The rise of the pop-up gallery, taking cheap advantage of business premises regularly left vacant by this parlous impresarial culture, seems a bandwagon on which one could jump. Different areas could show different types of work, the naked bodies could be placed discreetly at the back, including a table of all my old life class sketches, sold off for a pound each, under the witty label, A Pound of Flesh (laugh, damn you!), and the centrepiece of the show would be a pop-up book, opened to reveal a scale model of the whole show. Sheer genius.
wot else?
I just don’t do focus or category, nor, as la japonesa pointed out, do I ‘have a bland’ (I assume she meant ‘brand’). Nor do I stick to the usual art forms in my burgeoning, floundering creativity.
I’ve even registered the design (and got a distributor who will market them if I have them made). I fear they may fall into a ‘taste gap’ between the Newton’s cradle executive toy and the utterly naff clockwork willy, but there probably is a market for anyone with that old entrepreneurial drive what Yrs Trly so lacks, and the gonads to invest a couple of grand in having a Chinese manufacturer churn out thousands of bum-shaped glass paperweights, to be sold at £4 profit each. Apparently the Dragons of Den fame don’t like novelty items, or it would have been such fun to go on there and say, Ladies and Gentlemen, I’ve come to sell you my arse.
All memory had faded of where I’d heard of these delicious, spicy sandwiches, and no existing outlet sold the real thing, passing off the likes of plain pulled pork in a tiny, soggy ciabatta as substitutes for the delicious, foot-long remouladed beef, oysters, shrimp or pork patties with salad.
So there you have it, apart from a hundred books to read, a few ideas for barred cryptic crosswords and heaven knows what else burbling away in the back of the brane or the bottom of desk drawers, there’s enough to keep a small army going and bring hitherto undreamt of vistas of hope, laughter and delight to humankind, even before I get on to the philosophical works about love, chaos, value, sexual politics, blah, blah, blah.
But for now, weighed down by the enormity of it all and my innate defeatism, I need to get an early night. If anybody has actually been reading this, I suspect they do too.
Don’t have nightmares.
