menu

fish and chips

a dusting of cornflower

waves

a sparrow stuffed inside a sprout

followed by

grey blancmange

if you'll allow me

to break with tradition

I shall refuse gratingly your offer of vittel

and demand quietly you

present your least worn face

once in a while

if only to get the air to it

once in a while

small movements

evoke the shadow of chance

upon the auburn wall

small movements flicker

where pygmies shiver apologies

and triumph comes ever so slowly

repeating footfall

one sluggishly dragged and dropped

ever downwards downwards downwards

a cone on the head

worn like a crown

wake and forgive

what fresh idiom

strikes the blighted hand

who waves at sand

who waves at sand

who stares seabound

and barefoot

and now we lift

like a new kite

handled in joy's cloud

and go up

and go up

up into the sky

where soaring on vectors

the brave dismal scheme unfolds

under cover of impinging darkness

shadow of mule's visage

kicking and screaming

screaming and kicking

and all because

you wouldn't give him a sugarlump

Letting the paint dry

Sat listening to Moddi sing 'Matter of Habit', an Israeli song banned from the radio for suggesting that killing isn't the best thing to do and we should cultivate love.  Controversial indeed.  Have just got back from dinner at some friends' house and talking about music and sharing thoughts about art.  He is a painter and I've been telling him about my ink drawings, which are spontaneous expressions of unconscious gesture which through blindness and egotism I have come to consider essentially meaningful and been knocking them out at a rate of knots.  He takes as many months over his paintings as I take minutes.  He said he is thinking about the idea of letting the paint dry - giving time to give a considered continuation of an ongoing process of discovery that is making a painting.
     I don't know how to give time to a painting.  I can sometimes work on writing for long periods of time, but painting has always been what my tutor describes as 'expedient', which is a nice word for hurried.  I'm in the process of getting a new studio and want to use it to work on one picture for a number of weeks at least or even months, which means a completely new approach to painting.  Where every mark is thought out and exists in relation to the whole.  This is obvious to some people and even second nature but I find it really difficult.  I want instant gratification, which is unhealthy.  I don't think anyone achieved much in a moment that hadn't taken years of work to run up to.
   I've been playing music with another friend, David.  We want to make Arabic jazz-punk.  We are warming up playing guitar and clarinet and sometimes organ and hand drum.  We've had a few practices and I'm realising if I want to play the clarinet I'm going to have to start playing scales! Good heavens - scales.  There's a reason people drill through these things.  It's so you can know the keys enough and the rules to give a framework to expression.  Unfettered expression without rules is usually messy and incoherent.
  Along with the scales and the considered painting I have a new month resolution to start cycling. We'll see how this goes.  Even if I just get off the sofa to cycle up the road and back it would be a start.  There's enough going on in my life that I need more discipline and focus to progress and just keep above water.  I've been having a hard time mental health wise recently and have made a few bad decisions that have had repercussions.  I need to find a way forward.  I might start keeping this blog more often.  Blog reflections, manageable exercise, musical practice, painting regimen.  Go!  Come back and find out how I'm getting on, and if I ever got off the sofa.  Now I'm going to listen to the end of this record, have a cup of decaf tea and read my booklet about sleep hygiene in bed without looking at my phone every ten minutes.  Bye for now.

One leg to stand on

Up until recently, life had been pretty hectic.  I was constantly on the lookout for the next bit of excitement, zipping off to the various diary entries that populated my week, to art college, to my copywriting job, to various gigs and social events around the city and beyond.  And I had begun thinking to myself, 'what's the point of all this?'.  Why do I have to do so much? I was getting tired of it.  Each individual thing was fun, but I was emotionally worn out, and yet somehow unable to stay in and watch tv, unable to face the quiet.
  When the offer came to join an all ages parkour class, I jumped at it (pardon the pun).  I had been trying to get more exercise, and basically would do anything to avoid staying in more than I had to. I found in my own space, my thoughts would become cyclical and negative though I was hardly aware of them, just the restlessness and dissatisfaction they brought about.  I went to the parkour group, which was actually for children though adults were also allowed, and bust my achilles in an anecdote I have told too many times to bother repeating here (when you have an injury people's first question is how did you do it?  I started saying things like 'you should have seen the other guy). Basically running up a steep slope resulted in a snapping noise and searing, nauseating pain. After that I was in an adrenaline buzz.  It was a blessing in disguise, I said. I would spend more time at home, drawing and watching tv.  maybe I would finish my novel. There was this mad optimism.
             After being in a cast for a week and then transferred into this heinous boot (which I also have to wear to sleep in) I have been sat around plenty, but I haven't made peace with quiet. It has all in all been incredibly frustrating, and the novelty of being brought drinks and dinner gave way to guilt and a will to do things for myself again pretty early on.  having a heavy contraption on your leg is a constant niggle, particularly now there's an insect bite underneath, but I can walk on it now and its better than the cast. I only really need one crutch now and can stand on two feet. It's going to be on for over a month, and in that time I'll need lifts if I go anywhere such as the upcoming Arvon course (I will finish my novel) and I'm feeling more of a burden than ever. At least it's temporary.
I have watched more tv but I still can't sit through a whole film or even an hour of a series. My concentration is as shot as my patience (nothing to do with the leg) I can read a little. I picked up an Alan Bennet book that had belonged to my Grandmother, which wasn't the sort of profound literature I usually consider worthy of attention and for that very reason, surprise surprise, was a joy to read. It's better to read light things for fun than spend time not reading heavy things, if that makes sense. It sort of doesn't. That's the point I guess. If you'll only read weighty novels but can't concentrate on them that amounts to not reading + desire to read. I might have to work back up to Dostoevsky just as I'm going to have to work back up to being independent. In the meantime, I'm going to practice watching telly.

biro supplication

May these sour lessons
seek to softly temper my mettle
so that I can withstand
the cold and fire.

Wire my branches
so I can stand tall enough
to face the sun's encouragement.

Give me breath yet
that I may voice hope
and abandon disappointment
for the dream
that was not meant to be.

Release me of the chains of habit
so that I might see through fresh eyes
the morning dew
like tiny lenses.

when I open the
heavy front door
and step out again
into the quiet morning
may I learn
to take a joke
in its intended spirit
and see through the veneers of wax
that keep me from the true centre.

Release the muted nightingale
from her dark labyrinthine prison
and may too the dove
norms calm tidings
from welcoming lands.

Overturn the gilded mirror
and show me my true face
that I may wear it without shame
and bring me through
the crackling yellowed hallways
of confusion and into sanctuary
that I might set myself down
and do something useful
and maybe find pleasure in it.

tidal retreat

at low tide
the sand is swept
with small stones
and shells -
and bits of plastic
dug in like blue whelks -
string fronds emulate
jellyfish tendrils -
trace of memory
of containment -
pressed indents of transit
gather pools from the tabletop -
wet bed of grit
now exposed to other elements -
lapsed transparent canopy
blank now and bare to the sun -
reflecting nothing -
draining slowly dry
aching for the return
of an ocean
that for now
has forgotten.

Because the Internet/do you 'like' me/is sharing caring? Reflections on Social Media

(pictured - 'Really Good' Fourth Plinth - David Shrigley)

A friend of mine started blogging recently and I was advising her slightly on how to reach a larger audience, suggesting she used appropriate hashtags.  While I use hashtags to try and perhaps reach someone who might want to read my writing, I don’t put a lot of thought into digital self marketing or whatever you’d call it, but it’s in your mind when you follow someone on instagram or twitter that they might follow you back.  What is it that we’re working towards with our online output?  She wanted some feedback for her words, which is a reasonable aim, but facebook wasn’t the format for it.  Somehow we can share things with strangers that we perhaps wouldn’t say to our acquaintances.  There is a degree of anonymity and a project of developing an online persona within the framework of whatever field you’re operating in. 

            I still try and write and draw and play music and take photographs for their own sake, but increasingly it has become bait for coaxing likes and followers.  It reminds me of a character in Childish Gambino’s extraordinary screenplay companion to the album of the same name – Because the Internet.  He says his job is twitter and all that sort of thing.  It’s what he puts all his time into.  His friend says he hasn’t got a job, because he doesn’t need one, and this is just what he does with his time.  There is in the proliferation of internet social media output an assumption that this type of output is meaningful, and the feedback and likes we get a valuable and genuine currency rather than a whimsical gesture or cynical attempt to curry favour to reciprocate.

            The internet is an amazing platform for communication.  It connects most of the world.  But it is also as we know a superlative procrastination device.  I wonder how many people are distracted from their life’s work by making work that can be understood in the few seconds that people take to look at an image on their phone.  I wonder what could have been accomplished if the thought put into every facebook status was put into a novel.  What is the best outcome of blogging, or posting songs on soundcloud?  Some sort of internet fame?  Is that even desirable?  Maybe it draws attention to more serious work we produce and helps us reach a wider audience.  I don’t know if these thoughts resolve.  I think I will continue posting stuff online.  When I hear about friends who’ve left facebook I look at them with the same baffled admiration of someone who has quit smoking.  This is the world we live in, posting just about every facet of our lives for encouragement and admiration.  It feels like there’s no escape.  It feels to some extent that real expression is being strangled by an urge towards caricatured versions of ourselves that are more palatable as a product.  Whatever, this is how it is.  Like it or leave.  If this read like a moan, it’s not quite meant to be one.  I’m really asking questions of myself, why I blog, post drawings, poems, songs.  Is anyone really listening?  Does it mean anything?  Who knows.

I dreamed I was an architect

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Every Wednesday at four I play badminton with my new support worker, who is an exceptional badminton player and drives me into the ground.  Afterwards, we have a coffee and talk about things, and feeling fairly refreshed from the running around I had a good chat unencumbered by the usual anxiety and paranoia that can disrupt my conversations even with dear friends. 

We started off talking about politics for some reason, I think it was just something to talk about because I hadn’t brought anything particular up, and with Trump having unfortunately got in that’s a conversation that’s going to keep occurring for a while.  Actually I do remember why it came up.  We were talking about Charles Saatichi and saying his gallery was interesting but he’s a bit of a shit (paraphrasing).  I didn’t realise he was behind Margaret Thatcher’s ad campaign in the 80s.  I’m assuming it was the 80s.  That it might be earlier and I don’t know is indicative of my view of politics. 

There is a lot of unfairness in the world, and I have sometimes tried to find small ways to help.  But when the struggles of a day are so hard to negotiate, it’s difficult to be engaged with making a better world in any meaningful way.  My mind throws me this way and that, sends me retreating into my head in a dissociated fuzz.  I worry what people think of me.  I worry about who I am.  I disengage from the world around me, while at the same time trying to immerse myself in it because neither am I comfortable in my own world. 

I do a lot of things to entertain myself, going out to gigs, for coffee, to meet friends, doing readings, playing music, writing, drawing, posting obsessively online.  I feel like my activity is evidence that I could be doing more.  That I don’t need to be living at home any more.  That I could work more.  But every day the struggle is waiting and all I can do is all anyone can do, muddle through in my own ineffectual way.

The reason for this post was the revelation that this illness I struggle with has a meaning for me.  When I was still at school, figuring out what to do with my life, but having a broad range of interests, before eventually finding little enthusiasm for anything but expressionist painting and listening to music, while there was still a host of paths I should go down, I opted for architecture.  I had an interview at Cambridge and took my portfolio, which had a lot of writing in it, which I thought demonstrated creativity.  Stupidly, I said to them in the interview “I want to be a writer really, but there’s not likely any money it” thinking they would admire my honesty.  They told me to go and be a writer.  I went away disappointed.  I felt like if I could become an architect it would satisfy the expectations on me, my need for success.  I got a place at Bath to study, a lovely campus by an artificial lake.  I was worried about it, of course, but the future was coming. 

Would this have made me happy?  I wonder.  In the end, a breakdown decided for me.  I wasn’t to go, but spent my first week in hospital.  I went on to do photography at HCA and had a great time.  I remember it as a good time, but I also know I was excessively paranoid much of it.  Still somehow I am nostalgic about the friends I made and the sense of freedom I felt.  I went on to Kingston to pursue my career in writing by studying Journalism and English but my health again moved me towards creativity rather than more academic study and I did Graphic Design.

What I’m getting to, is this illness has allowed me or in fact forced me to explore my creativity, and limit the unfair expectations I had on myself, which at one point were indulging the idea of studying PPE at Oxford to try and get into government, because maybe if I was prime minister it would satisfy the need for validation through success at work!  It’s embarrassing to admit I thought like this, but I always felt I had to ‘be somebody’.  I’ve had to modify those ambitions, and learn to be content as possible with just being me.  The lowering of expectations and slightly improved sense of humility has been helpful, yet there’s a way to go yet with building up gratitude for the little things and allowing myself to be myself and be happy with that.  Maybe only once you give up any idea that you have to succeed for other people is there any chance you can work towards any success in what you’ve chosen to do.  Maybe it would have been a shame to have chosen a career for largely financial reasons, and never explored creativity beyond technical drawing.  Maybe I would have been a happy architect.  Who knows.  But that version of me never came into fruition in this reality, and I have to be content with who I am, even if that sometimes feels like a failure.