the new emotional blackmailer's handbook

Sunday, August 16, 2015

joseph cornell at the Royal Academy ...

https://www.royalacademy.org.uk/exhibition/joseph-cornell

i loved it

if you do get a chance to see it, be sure to take your most powerful reading glasses

then you can get as up close and personal with the material as the artist must have been

other people's aesthetics .... i find myself gobsmacked pretty often by the sophistication of objects whose meaning is hidden from me .... here are some mayan heiroglyphics

https://decipherment.wordpress.com/2015/03/16/the-nomenclature-of-la-corona-sculpture/

its part of what was once a heiroglyphic stairway in guatemala, sadly looted and dispersed

http://www.mesoweb.com/LaCorona/LaCoronaNotes03.pdf

https://decipherment.wordpress.com/2015/07/17/preliminary-notes-on-two-recently-discovered-inscriptions-from-la-corona-guatemala/

Saturday, August 15, 2015

just came across this artist ... samuel bak

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Bak

Saturday, August 8, 2015

up before dawn and have just read the first chapters, and am hooked ...

... then i went back to a really deep sleep for an hour and i dreamed one of those dreams that wakes you up because you know it has a "meaning" and a "message", and it reflects some deeply buried and unfinished business from long ago ... oh. well ! you can't hope to resolve the whole of your past into neat rows of brightly coloured picture book stories with happy endings ... can you ?

postscript .... the novel narrates a series of truly horrid and gruesome events as experienced by a mixed bunch of heroin addicts whose lives intersect in bombay ... at the same time it examines the purpose and tenacity of people's so-called free will in a modern city ... the writing is transparent and i am very pleased to have encountered it ... three hurrahs !

Sunday, August 2, 2015

miguel and magdalena by the old main road at lagartera

thirty years ago, just after semana santa

they lived in the middle of spain but they had seasonal jobs on the coast

they were waiting for a bus that would take them back to ? lloret de mar ? overnight

they didn't want to go, and tears had begun to fill their eyes

Sunday, July 19, 2015

imtiaz dharker ... how did i not know this lady's work ?

Imtiaz Dharker
1977 (I am quite sure of this)

The Sex Pistols in celebratory mood, 1977. Photograph: Hulton Archive

Some Glaswegians still speak of the Silver Jubilee
and the Queen's cavalcade sailing off
from George Square on a sea of Union Jacks.
Others recall that around the same time
the Sex Pistols' God Save the Queen
was black-listed by the BBC

but what I remember is
that one night I danced in spangled
hotpants, with a boy in polyester
flares (I am quite sure of this),
in time, on track, one hand in the air,
one step forward, one step back.

Time is easily tangled. It falls over its own feet.
That year peeled itself as perfectly
as the rings around Uranus.
Smallpox was eradicated, miles of fibre optics
laid, personal computers offered to the masses.
People said it had never been so good

and what I remember is
the popcorn mix at Regal Cinema,
salt over sweet, the triumph of good
over evil, light-sabres slashing the air
in synchronised time, on track,
one step forward, one step back.

People said it had never been so bad,
Bengal hit by a cyclone, snow in Miami,
New York plunged into darkness.
and out of the sky a fireball fell on Innisfree.
People said it was a sign. And that was the year
Steve Biko died.

Other people died in other years, but that year
Groucho Marx and Charlie Chaplin died.
Jacques Prevert and Robert Lowell died.
In Memphis, Elvis died. Still,
someone called Roy Sullivan was struck
by lightning for the seventh time
and survived

but because of the odd way time unfolds,
what I remember is the last few seconds,
the countdown under a glitterball
(I am quite sure of this),
light flashing in your eyes
and your hair as you moved
in time, on track, one hand in the air,
one step forward, one step back,

and ah, ah, ah, ah,
staying alive. Staying alive.

more nonsense

Saturday, July 18, 2015

charity shop trophy ... bonnard, thames and hudson, 1984 ... a most wonderful book

Sunday, July 12, 2015

post-ironic ... almost all of the navajo code talkers have gone ... and now comes the navajo app

http://navajocodetalkers.org/peter-macdonald-real-code-talker-interview/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_MacDonald_(Navajo_leader)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_talker#Navajo_code_talkers

http://navajotimes.com/business/2013/0913/091213keyboard.php#.VaIqtvmbyL8

http://nativeinnovation.com/dine-keyboard-app/dine-keyboard-app-for-iphone

Wednesday, July 8, 2015

the sun never sets over the feline empire

Sunday, July 5, 2015

traditional remedies ( part 99 ) ... vigorous brushing and prolonged gargling with anis, three times a day, will remove those tell-tale traces of garlic from your breath

Saturday, July 4, 2015

just out of storage, after about fifteen ? years ... here's one i knocked off during an idle moment ...

... it was cobbled together using offcuts of curved skirting boards from a factory in portslade that used to build new pub interiors ... but i abandoned it because i never could make up my mind on the final shape and wording ... the painted order of "verses" is clearly flummoxed, or do i mean bolloxed ? ... and twould be better in this order ...

F I R S T W I L L & T E S T A M E N T

Burn this old body now sweet life has gone,

But wait until the harvest moon comes round

Before you cast my ashes high upon

The weather beaten carpet of the downs.

Dearly beloved of the strong & tender dead,

Whilst seasons’ shadows slide around her sleeping curves,

And captive constellations flame & slowly turn,

Attentive to her enigmatic metronome,

Here, tired of juggling Death & Birth,

& resting from Creation’s Dance,

The Goddess Earth’s stone fingers play

Cat’s Cradle with our nights and days.