Billie Holiday

Lonesome Traveller

"No man should go through life without once experiencing healthy, even bored solitude in the wilderness, finding himself depending solely on himself and thereby learning his true and hidden strength."

- Jack Kerouac 'Lonesome Traveller'

I suppose that this is what I was creating in a way, in 'Traces', a way for participants to negotiate their wilderness in a sense...

I have started to read Murakami's 'Sputnik Sweetheart', recommended by a new friend :), opened it today sitting in the garden on our old picnic table. these are the favourite of the heroine's kerouac words. she's a writer,

,,,,'"My head is like some ridiculous barn packed full of stuff I want to write about," she said. "Images, scenes, snatches of words . . . in my mind they're all glowing, all alive. Write! they shout at me. A great new story is about to be born - I can feel it. It'll transport me to some brand-new place. Problem is, once I sit at my desk and put them all down on paper, I realize something vital is missing. It doesn't crystallize - no crystals,just pebbles. And I'm not transported anywhere."
,,,,,With a frown, sumire picked up her 250th stone and tossed it into the pond. *quiet, plip*
,,,,,"Maybe I'm lacking something. Something you absolutely must have to be a novelist."
,,,,,A deep silence ensued. It seemed she was seeking my run-of-th-mill opinion. *silence*
,,,,,After a while I started to speak. "A long time ago in China there were cities with high walls around them, with huge, magnificent gates. The gates weren't just doors for letting people in or out, they had greater significance. People believed the city's soul resided in the gates. Or at least that it should reside there. It's like in Europe in the Middle Ages when people felt a city's heart lay in its cathedral and central square. Which is why even today in China there are lots of wonderful gates still standing. Do you know how the Chinese built these gates?"
,,,,,"I have no idea," Sumire answered.
,,,,,"People would take carts out to old battlefields and gather the bleached bones that were buried there or lay scattered about. China's a pretty ancient country - lots of old battle-grounds - so they never had to search far. At the entrance to the city they'd construct a huge gate and seal the bones up inside. They hoped that by commemorating the dead soldiers in this way they would continue to guard their town. There's more. When the gate was finished they'd bring several dogs over to it, slit their throats, and sprinkle their blood on the gate. Only by mixing fresh blood with the dried-out bones would the ancient souls of the dead magically revive. At least that was the idea."
,,,,,Sumire waited in silence for me to go on. *silence*
,,,,,"Writing novels is much the same. You gather up bones and make your gate, but no matter how wonderful the gate might be, that alone doesn't make it a living, breathing novel. A story is not something of this world. A real story requires a kind of magical baptism to link the world on this side with the world on the other side."
,,,,,"So what you're saying is that I go out on my own and find my own dog?"
,,,,,I nodded. *pause*
,,,,,"And shed fresh blood?"
,,,,,Sumire bit her lip and thought about this. She tossed another hapless stone into the pond. *silence, plip* "I really don't want to kill an animal if I can help it."
,,,,,"It's a metaphor," I said. "You don't have to actually kill anything."'

listening to: I don't know but it's all right, some kind of metal

Life Art - how do you see yours?

The Experience was called 'Traces' and it was actually a really simple piece.

I hand-picked carefully and wisely suitable 'guide-dogs' from my friends to lead spectators/participants blindfolded on the 2km journey through london streets from studio 3 to my house. halfway through the journey they had a chance to negotiate their walk on their own, with the aid of a sturdy bamboo stick, through a carpark, and along a quiet residential street...

they enter eventually my house, where their guides describe to them some photographs on the hallway wall - then they are led into the room where they are sat down and left alone, until the last participant has come through the door and sat down. Sometimes we can wait 15 minutes before the next person arrives, but generally it is only one or two...

I'd blacked out the windows and draped an old black stage curtain over the door to block out any light, and a recording of me starts to play, telling them that they can remove their blindfolds. the outcome of the blackout is that their open eyes just meet with total darkness; they have no idea that i am sitting in the room with them, or of who else is present... I'd recorded me saying some stuff - I will post it up later - inviting them really to reflect on their senses and perception, and memory and some other little things. The recording fades in and out of clarity to give their own minds opportunity to wander... Only 4 or less people could experience the piece at any one time which I think works best... at the end of the recording, silence and I light a candle to break the darkness, alerting them to my presence, and feed the participants a chocolate and a cognac (mmm!!) There is the muted murmur of traffic seeping into the dim light of the room... I have painted a beautiful moroccan mandala on the wall...

We talk, about their journeys, about anything that they are inspired to talk about really, after which they go outside and see the photographs that were described to them, with other paraphernalia strewn and pinned around, and then on out into the outside world once again - with their own eyes, and minds tick tock ticking :)

Well, that's it roughly in a nutshell. Simple, but effective it appears and it seemed to stimulate and press the buttons that I was aiming for... reflection on perception and aperception, .... etc.etc. The whole thing in all takes about an hour...

A woman from Battersea Arts Centre, Shelley Hastings, was interested after my tutor Katja told her about it, and came to experience on wednesday, so it may be that I will have the chance to develop it further and take it around London - if so then there is lots that I would fine tune and incorporate... it can be taken off into so many different directions...

listening to: Reggae... well it's been sunny and we have been sitting in the garden all day :)

a story from a friend (authenticity debatable, tho...)

His name was Fleming, and he was a poor Scottish farmer. One day, while trying to make a living for his family, he heard a cry for help coming from a bearby bog. He dropped his tools and ran to the bog.

There, mired to his waist in black muck, was a terrified boy, screaming and struggling to free himself. Farmer Fleming saved the lad from what could have been a slow and terrifying death.

The next day, a fancy carriage pulled up to the Scotsman's sparse surroundings. An elegantly dressed nobleman stepped out and introduced himself as the father of the boy Farmer Fleming had saved.
"I want to repay you", said the nobleman. "You saved my son's life."
"No, I can't accept payment for what I did," the Scottish farmer replied, waving off the offer.
At that moment, the farmer's own son came to the door of the family hovel.
"Is that your son?" the nobleman asked.
"Yes," the farmer replied proudly.
"I'll make you a deal. Let me provide him with the level of education my own son will enjoy. If the lad is anything like his father, he'll no doubt grow to be a man we both will be proud of."

And that he did.

Farmer Fleming's son attended the very best schools and in time, graduated from St. Mary's Hospital Medical School in London, and went on to become known throughout the world as the noted Sir Alexander Fleming, the discoverer of Penicillin.

Years afterward, the same nobleman's son who was saved from the bog was stricken with pneumonia.

What saved his life this time? Penicillin.

The name of the nobleman? Lord Randolph Churchill.
His son's name?

Sir Winston Churchill.

Someone once said: What goes around comes around.


Work like you don't need the money.

Love like you've never been hurt

Dance like nobody's watching

Sing like nobody's listening

Live like it's Heaven on Earth


Listening to: Bob Marley 'Buffalo Soldier'

live art

comments made on my piece:

"The moment in darkness in your room was really amazing. So dark. Real reflection on myself for a few minutes. Feels strange now entering the big, bright world that awaits outside your front door..."

"It was so relaxing and changed my perception on the environment which I live so much!"

"I found my imagination had been stimulated. The images I was visualising in my head were wicked, after first relating them to experiences in my past I began to imagine New Cross in thousands of years time as an historical ruin"

"Cinematic!"

"Terrifying!"

"It's definately made me appreciate the senses I neglect and opened up my perception of my surroundings"

"Oh I had so much to say but I feel a little drunk after the cognac that Tara gave me"

"Um... yes... that was... thank you..."

If your breasts

If your breasts are too big you will fall over, unless you wear a rucksack.

Ivor Cutler - 'Private Habits'

sunday morning sex

Joao and Celine are making love in the room next door. I can hear C moaning and gasping a hot wave softens me and tugs at me pulling my belly down into my groin...

... vicarious living! ;o)


listening to: i've already told you!

hope it all works out

how do you reach out to someone when you don't even really know them? something in their lives, their words, touches you and you want to sit with them, to make them smile, to say - I'm supporting you, i'm sending you these wishes wishes warm and wrapped in orange silver foil, to help you ease the pain - or simply to say, for whatever it's worth, needed or not needed, you have a friend here...

... a ladybird, small, insignificant, still its tiny red wings trail the sun behind them...


listening to: my heart, my head ponders...

HELLOOOOooooooooo

my heart is bursting... spring has arrived and the sun is beating in through my open window, kissing my neck. This light makes my body feel alive, searing right through into my belly and shining right back out through every pore... i want to eat the days mount the minutes and ride them deeply, feel each second's finger sllide slowly down my back... I. am. filled. with. morning. glory. always. in. this. moment... I dance, laughing, this pulse is all that matters

smile. this day is for you too

:o)



listening to: les severes 'fric frac froc'

Cork, S.Ireland

I met ___ a photographer from Lithuania. She photographs dance and we were here @ the Firkin centre to see 'La Rencontre'. She would like to learn Flamenco and I said about my travels through Spain in search of the flamenco spirit. We talked of community arts, she wants to bridge communication between Eastern and Western Europe. Evie met some people that ___ could work with... I'll email and tell her...

I had my new blue coat with my flowers and butterfly, red, pinned to the lapels (8 euro from a charity shop. The lining is ripped but it is beautiful) like an armadillo in a dark crystal with my backpack black slouchbag and brown paper bag. My little brown cloth cap had done its best to keep the cold wind off my head. I blustered in, calculating where best to sit, discretion of exit and potential of view. Smiled at the woman who had told me yes, this seat was free, and said I needed to be able to leave to catch my flight back to london. She needed to be able to leave too she told me, to get back to the convent. She is a teacher she told me. "You can have a coffee you know, over there!" she said gleefully, conspiratorial - "Is it free?" Yes, and so I got a coffee and a small red wine and precariously balanced by looming bum into the chair without spilling the coffee too much.

The nun loves dance, it is in her soul she says, it moves her. The other nuns laugh at her she says (smiling) when she goes off during mass to experience a performance somewhere. One time she was so impressed she taught some of the movements to some students and they expressed them during hymns in church. You could have heard a pin drop, she said, in the silence of the reaction. She was very alive and glowing. A vibrant gentleness, of innocent magic to me there. "How wonderful" I laughed and clapped my hands together.

She had seen one not so long ago, a contemporary dance that the choreographer had devised when she was sixteen in response to some minimalist musician, it reminded the nun of the sparsity of a Samuel Beckett play. And of madness, like someone falling apart... All tiny tensioned movements that jitter your body as you watch and taughten the mind. It weighed down her heart I read in a way. She did not understand it she said, well she understood the emotion but could not grasp the poetry. Classical, balletic flow is a language she is more prone to relate to. I suggested that her preference perhaps offered more resolution, holisticism in a sense in its 'narrating' and as such i think now, more hope. Where one zoomed in on a psyche's angst and indulged in its imagination the other contained it as a drop in a river flowing...

[A memory now, as I write, the Dead River Trail, Waukegan, Illinois, USA 1993 (?)] Anyway... she agreed. She replayed the performance to me, condensed, as she had to her convent fellows and made them giggle, as did I, at these mental videos she was sharing with me. And no doubt with the ones that I was sharing with myself. As always. Our stories collide and dance with each other. She had a beautiful open face, and sparkling eyes... She crept out at around the same time as I did, and we moved on into our separate worlds.

"How great it is that I've met somebody here. Someone to connect with," ____ said. Her father is an artist in Lithuania. He exhibits in Germany, but people do not seem to 'get' him here in the west. Eastern art is so different, ____ says, she would like to open the western mind and eye to it, build a cultural dialogue between us. She is sending me some of her photographs. She wants to open a gallery but of course has no money and no time to make it, so I suggested she squat an empty building and set it up as a community arts project. If she finds people to build on it with it could perfectly be a doable enterprise. So it is great that as I was meeting ____, Evie was meeting some others just up the road who have already set up such a place in Cork, running for 12 years, and the time is right for them to move on to a fresh endeavour and for their paths to meet, for west to encounter east.

Choreographic encounters all

DRUM SKIN

In the sky a dove lands on a drum's skin to listen. The drummer slowly turns the drum till the creature's beak faces the afternoon. They both dream of other matters. Their smiles are reflected in a shaving mirror propped outside a wide tent.

A soldier's trumpet sends her to a tree.

- Ivor Cutler 'Private Habits'

listening to: spring arriving...

LUNATIC

Living creatures, completely unaware of Man's immortal soul see him only as a viscious destructive creature with an infinite capacity for making a mess, unable to relate to The Earth and without aesthetics. As a dying butterfly was heard to whisper:-

"He's a fucking lunatic!"

- ivor cutler 'private habits'

what is death,,,,,,,,, the end of a moment
,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,the beginning of a new moment?
i miss nothing and everything about you
it strikes suddenly a snake bite at my ankles
a photograph rattles and i forget to watch
where i am walking.
too easy to slumber in darkness
when your smile is a sun
is your smile a sun now?
i am numb,
and clouds keep shadowing my inspiration
with this breeze too soft for wind
yes,,,,this breeze too is tired and numb
is short of breath.
music pulls my heart from my belly
a tiny swelling sea
that sticks saltily deep in my throat.
i forget, willingly, swimming a delirious void
i forget, willingly, swimming a delirious void
this self indulgence disgusts me,
and i look up at the sky
feeling maybe i could dive in and fly above
me, through these thoughts and feelings
into the sun,,,,,,, into your smile.
when your smile is a sun
is your smile a sun now?
is your smile a sun?
my pen moves and letters fill the void, shading
goes over the edges.,,,,i'm just a child.
music louder fills me up its swelling spills over
my edges.,,,,i'm just a child.,,,,i close
my eyes and i am dancing.
inside me is dancing
spinning to the centre of a spiral
thin as gossamer
a spider's web that sparkles in the sun
is your sun a smile?
your smile is it a sun yet? now?
new beginnings... old and new beginnings...

lovers, kilkenny, s.ireland 

jeerpoint abbey, nr. thomastown, s.ireland

Evie and I walked 15km through irish country side to visit this place, and mount juliet where we had tea and a little biscuit. When we returned to thomastown we drank guiness, made beautiful signs and set off to hitch to Dungarven as dusk was settling...

evie dances, london 

Kilkenny, S.Ireland

Ireland is threaded by streets with curious names...

Cork, S.Ireland 

this blue planet and diy

I've just had a wicked couple of hours. meant to wake up at 8am but opened my eyes to see the red glow of 11:55 staring back at me! Just had the time to get dressed when the doorbell rang and Jason was standing there almost an hour early. hadn't even had time to find my car keys, but i made us some good coffee and we chatted about the film he is making and then i rummaged in my room whose chaos i am in the process of ordering, to find the keys. Mission: wheel change.
,,,,,About two weeks ago my neighbour knocked on my door to ask me about the work i was doing on my car. "what work?" i had parked it in their driveway after i'd returned home to find Joao's beautiful v-dub camper and his friends vast white van filling ours. so, "what work?" i asked. "did you take the wheel off your car?" george says, hmmm. i'm thinking, processing this turn of events. transpires someone stole a wheel off my car and ripped down part of our neighbours wall to hold up the chassis!!!! they stole my wheel ??!!@!? (they ripped down the wall?!!? thoughtful at least, in a way...) it's an ugly wheel at that no hubcap soot black n rusting but i guess beggars aren't choosers... (though i thought theives might be..?..) so, it has taken me a while to get round to doing something about it. for ages now the plan has been to drive down with J to some beach so that he can film the burning of his puppet theatre - delayed for a while as i needed to get tax disc, and then this put a fresh spanner in the works... speaking of which that is exactly what i was lacking! and my mind runs over all the times when i was going to invest in a good toolbox but didn't... because...
,,,,,So, J had turned up to give me a hand (well, two) to put on a spare wheel (if i had one which wasn't certain) and then i was going to make us lunch. well after some hunting i located the spare underneath the rear of the car, and figured out that in order to get it we had to unscrew a bolt in the boot. right. found the jack, hoisted up the chassis and then marched to the garage to buy the spanner all fired up n ready to go got back J released the spare from above whilst i pushed up the spare's cradle from below, n I positioned it ready on its screws. we're glowing with a sense of satisfaction by this point and go to open the door to retreive the nuts that i'd left on the driver's seat. it won't open. keys.ok. o no. J's shut the boot. where are the keys? in the boot. in the self locking boot. heheheh. ok. tick tock tick. tick. tick. tock - so luckily the removal of the bolt holding the spare to the underside of the car has left a hole in the boot big enough for the keys to fall through, so i run in to get a metal coat hanger and we set to problem solving part b, i the eyes and J the hook, clitter clatter - oooaahh ... - o - .... yee-eessss - o, na, eee... (bend a bit more) ... hnnneeaa... gasp ..... ..... .... yeeaaayyy!!!! By the time we'd put the wheel back on and filled it with air we weren't just glowing we were positively neon smiles rotund with satisfaction and an earthy sense of acheivement, you'd've thought we'd built the car from scratch! Gold!
,,,,,13:50 and just enough time to chopper some veg n garlic n onion with spinach and ricotta sauce and whip up some pasta, swilling it down with talk of animation film and the recent discovery of jurassic trees in some mountain crevice. And the strange phenomenon of how the creatures that david attenborough revealed in his ground-breaking documentary The Blue Planet bear such a striking resemblance to weird and wonderful monsters formed in countless imaginations since... eons... weird... I mention how ironic it is that this planet is called 'Earth' when 70% or so of it is water (we'd been talking about adding salt to food and how cows milk contains salt which makes sense as we are 70-80% salt water inside anyways) to which Jason quite rightly points out that whilst on the surface this is true, there is still land beneath the ocean... 14:20 and J leaves. It's been a fun afternoon so far, and J's agreed to be a 'guide dog' for me for my performance art! ("I always thought that guide dogs had people inside them" J said)
Well i'm going to help out some friends with their live art now and play dead!

listening to: all the things i have to do running through my head...

the narrator

ok, a reminder to myself!
browsing the blogs and clicked on the third and watched a video of a guy who reminded me of people i went to college with many moons ago, voice-scratching. stoned off his chops and growing out of the floor.
but suddenly i'm hearing voices, and among the trillion things hobbling through my mind i'm thinking virus, some little digital man is tracking my every virtual movement. but the point is it wasn't, and he was, which is good. because now i can go round blindfolded for a few days and not compromise on using the computer cos i can just switch on said little man and he can navigate me on my pc. only i don't know what i did to set him off so i'll have to figure that one out.
it is called the narrator, for the visually impaired.
o joy! hallelujah for happy accidents!

listening to: a bird whistling outside. zipadeedoodah :)
,,,,,,,,,the caw of a crow and the soft windsock rumble of planes overhead. a dog barks. alarm somewhere to the left in the distance beyond damp whisper of traffic...
,,,,,,,,,that bird sure has a lot to say!

the cartoon knows (the whys and wherefoto'es)

Blind Willie Mctell took me to meet Char at hey dooders, and this snippety-gibbet chuckled me... for whenever i'm feeling the sodden weight of 'o crap!' ...

... All I could see was nothingness. And I was part of this nothingness. I closed my eyes and listened to the sound of my heart, to the sound of the blood circulating through my body, to the bellows-like contractions of my lungs, to the slippery undulations of my food-starved gut. In the deep darkness, every movement, every throb, was magnified enormously. This was my body: my flesh. But in the darkness, it was all too raw and physical.

,,,,,Soon my conscious mind began to slip away from my physical body.

,,,,,I saw myself as the wind-up bird, flying through the summer sky, alighting on the branch of a huge tree somewhere, winding the world's spring. If there really was no more wind-up bird, someone would have to take on its duties. Someone would have to wind the world's spring in its place. Otherwise, the spring would run down and the delicate mechanism would grind to a halt. The only one who seemed to have noticed that the wind-up bird was gone, however, was me.

,,,,,I tried my best to imitate the cry of the wind-up bird in the back of my throat. It didn't work. All i could produce was a meaningless, ugly sound like the rubbing together of two meaningless, ugly things. Only the wind-up bird could make the sound. Only the wind-up bird could wind the world's spring the way it was supposed to be wound.

,,,,,Nonetheless, as a voiceless wind-up bird unable to wind the world's spring, I decided to go flying through the summer sky - which turned out to be fairly easy. Once you were up, all you had to do was flap your wings at the right angle to adjust direction and altitude. My body mastered the art in a moment and sent me flying effortlessly wherever I wanted to go. I looked at the world from the wind-up bird's vantage point. Whenever I had had enough flying, I would land on a branch and peer through the green leaves at rooftops and roads. I watched people moving over the ground, carrying on the functions of life. Unfortunately, though, I could not see my own body. This was because I had never once seen the wind-up bird and had no idea what it looked like.

,,,,,For a long time - how long could it have been? - I remained the wind up bird. But being the wind-up bird never got me anywhere. The flying part was fun, of course, but I couldn't go on having fun for ever. There was something I had to accomplish down here in the darkness at the bottom of the well. I stopped being the wind-up bird and returned to being myself.

'The Wind-up Bird Chronicle' - Haruki Murakami


listening to: ,,,the rain
,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,and a documentary 'who killed stalin?'

what looks like my sholder growing out my ear is actually billie holliday!


-----------------------------

(my cat, for those that didn't know and were wondering)...

fridge poetry

day and road are blue eternity
leaves shake spring from death and
you drive on through a delicate flood
light of summer
, ,,,,,,the winter is shadow
yes
,,,,,,, time is red
,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, is read
recall the moment
,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, a sad mad mist
,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, a drunken purple sun
,,,,,,, my watch is fast behind
,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, no rain

singin voodoo cherries and omnietheric dancing jellyfish

check out these cinematic ad-arts at link below:

http://www.welcometoplanet3.com/home.html

if anyone knows who directed them please let me know! should be doing film any time now if they aren't already...

gene kelly's breakbeat singing an dancin' in the rain

this advert is brilliant. paste (or click on) link below to have a look for yourselves. and if anyone has other gems they'd like to share please let me know!

open in a new window, and be patient as the page can take a while to download...

http://www.visit4info.com/details.cfm?adid=20205

or
http://www.newstoday.com/_tpl/qbn/golfgti.mov may be a better quality video link...

directed by Jake Knight and Ryoko Tanaka :Ne-o
photography by Patrick Duroux


Also worth a peek is the citroen c4 transformer ad, which always makes me giggle when it comes on:
http://uk.download.yahoo.com/ne/fu/oa/eurcncs185030.mpg

home

sirens outside. nothing new, they are part of my soundscape now like seagulls on helston beach. feeling a stranger in my home. hard to know whether it is my comportment that is creating friction or the friction that feeds my moods.

drew's confrontation with me has affected me deeply i know. some say that it's because we secretly fancy each other that we have this conflict, and i have seriously pondered this possibility. i thought it could be so, but now it doesn't really make sense to me. and the discomfort spreads like ink on cotton bleeding into a big messy stain and i really have no idea how it got spilt in the first place. well ideas i have. but communication is at a big fat zero. even the cat seems pissed off with me.

though here i have another grapple with perception and aperception,

for maybe i wonder much is merely my subconscious casting shadows...
no, surely. i know it's not all in my head.

...

thoughts in a garden drinking coffee in july

and just for a second i thought i could fly