day - visual poem

sleep - visual poem

sleep is bad for you

“Sleep? I don’t need sleep. Sleep is for dreamers.” I’m Not There

Confusion when my alarm woke me this morning. Fri 31-10-2008 according to the display. Fuck, I’d lost a day somewhere. It should be Thursday. Wednesday was the last day I remember. I’d slept through Thursday. Let’s see, it’s 7am, I went to bed early around 11pm on Wednesday, so I’d slept 32 hours. No, that’s crazy. I’ve got to pack, I’m off to my mother’s this weekend. No, back up. The alarm would have gone off on Thursday, and it couldn’t have reset. Unless I did it in my sleep. Fuck, I missed a whole day in work. Or I lost track of the days in the week. Or maybe I went through Thursday in a fugue state, didn’t register anything, and I only just came round now.

I actually had to check with my computer, online, and with the radio to be sure it was Thursday. This is why I don’t like sleep, you lose track of everything. And the nightmares.

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i hate manchester literature festival

Yesterday was quite annoying. Between them the Literature Festival and Science Festival managed to make a bit of a hash of the reading at the Museum of Science and Industry. Ross Sutherland and Tim Clare had their lecture on OULIPO and constraints in writing stopped after the first half because the event was running late, Tony Walsh then had to go on sooner than he thought, and seemed to be feeling the pressure of time, and apparently a third person, a scientist I hadn't seen billed, was due to speak after that. I'm actually quite aggrieved that I only saw part of what I paid to see, especially as the lecture was informative, entertaining and well delivered, with some good poetry along the way. What was even more irritating is that I left before what I'm sure was an interesting third (final?) section because I thought I had voluntary work to do. As it happened though the guy I was due to visit had left the particular project he was attached to, but nobody had thought to let me know. I left early, did some jobs connected to voluntary work, and got soaked on my way across for no reason. So I now have to phone up my volunteer coordinator to find out what the hell's going on, and figure out a way I can catch the rest of Ross and Tim's lecture.

On to the positives. Tony Walsh's poem Zeroes and Ones is probably the most ambitious piece I've seen him deliver, and very well constructed. It's a long piece, but the dynamics of it are such that it apparently naturally peaks and troughs and carries you with it. The delivery was good, despite a slight hollowing and muffling of sound due to the lapel mic Tony was using. I would have been happy if it had been a bit longer, though doubtless the combined festivals would have foud some way to cut it short. Although the actual writing didn't owe much to some of the more experimental work I've been looking at lately, the content did touch on areas that reminded me of Christian Bok's Xenotext, among others. Because of what I thought was the need to leave early I didn't have a chance to stay and catch up with Tony after the event, or even on the break after he read, which probably looked a bit rude. Blame my voluntary work.

What I saw of Ross and Tim's lecture was, as I said before, very entertaining and well delivered. A multimedia - or at least powerpoint, video snips and music - extravaganza. I would thoroughly recommend it. But it wasn't a good advert for the Literature Festival. In previous years, because I find the programming so dispiritingly conservative, I've tended to avoid the festival altogether - I never want to see or hear another Carol Ann Duffy poem in my life. And I get very bored with the belief that all performed poetry has to be mildly amusing - fuck off! If I want a laugh I'll go to a comedian who knows what they're doing. This year I went to two events, Adrian Mitchell, which was excellent but with a very reverent and formal atmosphere, and yesterday, which was rudely truncated. It's confirmed a lot of predjudices I have about these sort of events. Who wants to be battered about by strict timings? Who wants to sit politely in formal rows with a clear delineation between audience and performer? Who wants culture to be something given to them, rather than something they have and take? Why aren't literary events more like gigs? I think next year I may be persuaded to give the festival a miss altogether - especially as my more radical tastes will be better catered for by parts of the Bury Text Festival.

The other upside to yesterday, aside from Tony's poem, and what I was allowed to see of Ross and Tim, is that I was able to swing by Cornerhouse and buy the new Vertigo, and a copy of Dominic Berry's Tomorrow, I Will Go Dancing. Both of which managed to avoid getting wet in my backpack, despite the pissing rain. More on Dominic's book another time - and yes, I'm aware I haven't written anything on the latest ifpthenq or Parameter magazines yet. Give me a chance.

Links and stuff to follow.

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hell yeah!

Right, yesterday was Womb, at which Gary was playing. A nice change from all that fucking poetry I'd say. We were all out of it in one way or another - although he's exhibited work and posted it on his MySpace Gary hadn't done any performance before so was really nervous, Helen had spent something like 10 hours from 36 on a coach to and from Scarborough with probably little sleep in between, and I'd been out 12 evenings from 13. Mildly altered states all round.

standing up is so 20th century

Wings & Claws opened proceedings with a wide array of wooden toys, melodicas, thumb pianos, bells, vintage looking stringed instrument thingies (I'm not a fucking musician, ask them), laptop, pedals and assorted other bits. It was every bit as great as it looked. Standing up is so 20th century, and when you've got so many wires dance routines are out of the question. They also give really good CD art.

They were followed by Gary who did interesting things to a guitar with tools and household implements first, then with contact mic-ed metal and plastic lids all run through pedals. He got some fantastically abrasive sounds with a metal scrapper thing on the metal lid - although I would have liked even more abrasiveness. But I don't even know what year it is, so I'm no judge. Apparently a couple of guys were talking all the way through, and when Helen spoke to them afterwards they said something like "Why not use a guitar the way it's meant to be used?" I can't even be arsed to comment on the stupidity of that.

why not use a guitar the way it's meant to be used?

Then PNAK were up. They were good, and indisputably good musicians, but for me it all got a bit close to psychedelia, which seems kind of unnecessary forty years after the fact. That said I'd be happy to see them live again, and I could even be persuaded to buy or download a record. But anyway, I'm not your guru, you're all special unique little snowflakes who can follow links and make up your own fucking little snowflake minds. Man it's melting my brain. So yeah, they were good, but least interesting to me.

make up your own fucking little snowflake minds

And finally Blood Moon, who made an outstanding noise with drums, bass, guitar, electronic thingies (I'm not etc. ask them), and pedals in whatever combination the two of them could manage. And they played in the dark. With quite the mildest strobe settings I've ever seen. Which did initially lead to problems when they couldn't see the controls on their pedals. Not that you would have known if they hadn't said. With the exception of PNAK they seemed to be the most structured, playing what might well be classified as tunes. Albeit loud, bass heavy, vocal-less tunes that were often pretty abrasive themselves.

the mildest strobe settings I've ever seen

It's a real shame that gigs like this only take place to crowds of less than two dozen, most of whom are bands and their friends. It's also a little weird that there were more people around for the beginning than were there when Blood Moon came on - they missed some top noise. But now, by the magic of Web 2.0 you can go to their MySpace pages and get a flavour of the night. Send them all your appreciation - especially monetary - especially in the direction of Blood Moon who's album launch it was, and who pulled the whole thing off.

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sound poetry improv

Gabcast! performed 'poetry' #0 - sound poetry improv 25 oct 08

Session of improvisation using LoopStation with Thumb Piano, circuit bent radio, circuit bent children's toy, then switching to handbuilt mic and vocals.




Haven't used Gabcast in a while but this session was marginally too long to use with Supload. It does exactly what it says up there.

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line - visual poem

circle - visual poem

I like the fact there's also a circle of condensation fogging the scanner next to the ink painted circle. I didn't realise until I'd done this that I'd cribbed the idea from this post by Troy Lloyd.

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how many poets & vaudeville 100

A brief thought from all the poetry, music, performance nights I've been going to lately. There's far too much comedy around. I like comedy, but I find there's something deadening when nights of poetry and theatre, even music from time to time, seem to require most of the acts be comic. As though if it's live it can't be too serious or people might demand their money back.

How Many Poets Does It Take To Change A Lightbulb was upfront about what the content was going to be - the Literature and Comedy Festivals bringing together poets and stand up comedians to do between 2-3 minutes of poetry each. It was always likely that most people would do at least one slightly funny piece. As it was also an attempt on a world record, meaning that there should have been somewhere over a hundred performers, and as I was there from 8pm to 2am and had work only a few hours later, you'll forgive me if I can't remember everything that I saw. You'll also forgive if I don't feel inclined to go through the running order and try to give an account of everyone. There was some tremendous stuff, I've seen Conor Aylward a few times now since getting back onto the scene, and he seem much more relaxed these days - his improvised poetry worked well there. Dominic Berry and a few others did poems they can probably do in their sleep now, but no worse for that. By the time I got on, two or three from the end it was close to 2am and there were about a dozen people in the place. It was a slightly tiring night, but at least I wasn't organising it or acting as one of the MCs - that would have been tough.

As it happens Thursday was also my birthday, so I had the day off and managed to see my sister and some friends. I probably would have done something else with my evening if I hadn't already been asked to take part, but I had a good time. Besides, 39 is a bit of a rubbish birthday if you're into symbolic ages. It's not 16, not 18, not 21, 25 or 40, it's just a little bit superfluous.

And on. Tired beyond the capacity to make sense I shambled off to the Greenroom yesterday for Vaudeville 100 in the Studio Space, which I'd forgotten is really fucking hot. It was an evening of two parts. There were technically three sections and two breaks, but the first two sections were relatively calm affairs, while the last section shat in its pants then sat on stage trembling and rubbing faeces in its face. Metaphorically speaking.

Again there were a lot of acts, I'm sure one poster said 50, but that include the video installations and the live music at the end that I didn't see. Highlights in absolutely no order at all would be Conor Aylward failing to get any contributions from the audience and having to do a version of part of Houses For Mouses that he did at the last Vaudeville, Gerry Potter doing a great performance of three fairly recent poems, despite forgetting the one he's most familiar with, Tam Hinton's routine almost degenerating into free-form audience heckling and physical violence, the sponge puppet comedian who started and closed the last section, and probably some other stuff I'll remember later.

One of the problems with the final section was that it was a fucking long night, many of the audience and performers were pissed by that time, and the temperature was closer to a sauna than Manchester in October. Ok, that's three problems. Another problem is that there were a few acts who were so formless and boring that even my attention was wandering, and by that stage I could have watched someone prising the keys off their laptop with fascination. By far the worst was a musician doing very dull things with a guitar and pedals. He was followed (I think) by the standout bit of the evening, another formless and boring act. Three 'clowns' calling themselves Fresh Meat Frat who wanted to be confrontational, who wanted to tear down the fourth wall, and who wanted to provoke a reaction. The first reaction was resistance, people just didn't want to participate. And by the time they'd got their unwilling volunteers it became apparent that there was nothing more to the act and the reaction changed into a combination of boredom and hostility. I don't know whether they'd had their 10 minutes, it certainly felt like it, but by the time they were hustled offstage it was probably for their own good. Given the reaction to Tam Hinton later on from friends and drunk tossers alike, who was in control of his material, had Fresh Meat Frat continued any longer they were in serious danger of being beaten up by the audience. It's curious, they probably got the reaction they were looking for if not for the reasons they wanted. I'm glad I saw it.

Thankfully I slept last night, all ready for the next five (or possibly seven) nights out. Strangely I haven't lost track of the month, or generally even the date (20th, 25th etc), but have found myself confused about what year it was. Mostly I wondered if it was 2009 yet, or if that was already past. And for one vertiginous moment this morning I accelerated way past that to convince myself it was 2016 and I was remembering a time in 2011 when I'd thought I was in 2010 believing it to be 2009. All this without the use of drugs, alcohol or jetlag. Yay!

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tuesday - a visual poem

tired

...and here's the evidence.


Actually Vaudeville was great, but I'm too knackered to make any sense. Just read that bollocks above and make your own post.

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my father and adrian mitchell

Post with links to obituaries for Adrian Mitchell 1932-2008

Tonight was the reading by Adrian Mitchell, who I'd never seen in the flesh as it were. He provoked a lot of thought and a lot of emotion, although both are also attributable to the amount of time I've spent out of the house lately, exposing myself to new art.

Some of the thoughts were comparing Adrian Mitchell to other artists, some of them were about my father, others were about the acoustics of the space, and there might have been other thoughts I've forgotten for the moment but may throw in later. Ah, here's one, memory over recording.

The reading itself. Although he had apparently recently been ill he didn't strike me as particularly frail or his voice particularly weak. Especially for someone in his mid-seventies with what sounds like a pretty full workload for anyone. Of course the PA was good quality and the acoustics of the space are very resonant which helped. The reading was divided into sections, which I gather is a current practice of his, moving from Education through Love to War and Death, from memory, although I may have missed one or got the order slightly wrong. Although all the poems were strong, I found the death poems most affecting. There were three pieces that stood out - one using a dream of gaps in dry stone walls to represent the loss of friends, one about his father - or was that part of the same poem? Maybe. And there was a piece about Ivor Cutler at the end of his life. This of course was when I started thinking about my father and about death, and got quite upset

Curiously, although he did To Whom It May Concern at the end of the set ("Tell me lies about Vietnam"), with some updated references I didn't find it very powerful. It sounded out of time, and not because of the reference to Vietnam, but because of the structure. It sounded like something exhumed from a long gone time, related to Bob Dylan, to Alan Ginsberg, to the folk revival, and the collision of blues, rock, civil rights and anti-war feeling of the period. Although appropriately it was during this poem that he began to make best use of the acoustics of the space, incanting the poem and bouncing the words off the ceiling. But at that point he was moving in quite an animated way and tapped his lapel mic, causing a large bang through the PA, and making him restrain both his voice and movements for the remainder of the poem. This was a key moment for thinking about the acoustics, although there were others.

Before Adrian Mitchell, musician and writer Paul Taylor played trombone and read poems. I didn't really enjoy the poems, and I felt that his trombone playing could have been more unconventional. This was the point at which I first started considering the acoustics of the space. The way sounds work in a given space has been on my mind since earlier in the year when I began making sound poetry. More recently I've become increasingly aware of the materiality of sound, of the incidental sounds of the 'instrument' (voice, chair, cymbal etc) and the space in which it's played. I would have loved to have had the huge gallery space at the Whitworth Gallery to play with acoustically. Given the nature of his poetry and performance, and his recent health problems with his lungs I wouldn't have expected Adrian Mitchell to use the space in an exploratory sound-art way. He didn't need to in any case, he's a great poet, and his poetry is strong enough alone. I would have thought that Paul Taylor as a musician might have enjoyed playing his trombone off the surfaces of the space, being able to play against his own reverberations. As it was, the most interesting moments were when he muted his trombone and the movements of the parts of the trombone could be heard.

Although this comparison is the wrong way round, since I'm more familiar with Chloe Poems work it will have to be this way. Adrian Mitchell's work does remind me of Chloe Poems, in that both quite apart from the socialism and honest self-examination seem simple, naive, even crude on the page, but prove much more sophisticated and controlled when reading aloud. He also at times recalls, as previously mentioned, the similarly apparently unpolished Ginsberg, and at times blues indebted artists, including Bob Dylan. He read a long translation of a Brecht piece, which clearly meant a lot to him, and seemingly affected him even as he was reading it.

I was more affected by the mention of imagining conversations with his parents. One of my regrets is that I don't dream of my father as much as I'd like. Although I think now in a way that's actually a good thing. I have no desire to supplant my father with my own imagined version, and I don't want to scrawl all over the memories I have with whatever reassurances, questions or contradictions I want at the time. It was those reflections that led me to realise that I don't especially ever want to photograph or film or record any event that I go to - although this is of course a kind of record. It's not important that I see exactly what everything looked like, or where ever sound fell in relation to every other. What's important in live art is what you take away from the experience at the time. The emotional reaction, the ideas brought up by the event, the way you actually experienced is far more important than simply saying I was there.

The problem with entering an essay like this with disparate ideas but no structure is that eventually you can't go anywhere else unless you just keep following new trains of thought. Or call a halt.

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jarman - visual poem

Still not the tribute that I promised a while back. I'm sure that I'll revisit and refine this form. It's here by way of celebrating that I finally finished the three-part written tribute this evening, and to express some of the ideas I have about Jarman's work as expressed there, and another that I'm keeping to myself for now. Achieved with a single movement.

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recently, and soon

Far from an exhaustive list, but here's a flavour of some of what's been keeping me out of the house lately. On Friday last week (10 October) I went along with my sister and friends Helen and Gary to the Embryo night at Studio Salford, above the Kings Arms. There were a variety of performances, mainly drama and music, among which was to be Helen's short film Happy Returns. Unfortunately the DVD wouldn't play, so it couldn't be shown. A couple of the bits of drama were interesting - mainly small sections of either completed works or works in progress. The music on the whole was less than compelling.

On Monday there was the launch of Flapjack Press (formerly Mucusart) at the Briton's Protection in Manchester. There were a lot of readers, including very familiar Manchester names like Gerry Potter (aka Chloe Poems), Jackie Hagan, Dominic Berry, Rosie Garland (aka Rosie Lugosi), and Tony Walsh. As with the majority of poetry events there was some absolutely fascinating stuff, and quite a lot of meh. I really enjoyed it though, and the place did gradually fill up from initially looking quite sparse. There was also a kind of afterparty where we moved on to another venue until around 1am - a little dumb considering I had to walk home and then get up early for work.

Thursday was Freed-Up at the Green Room. I wasn't reading, though a lot of the regular people were, on the theme of Evil. The advantage of the themed night is it means that mostly the work is stuff that hasn't been performed elsewhere.

The last couple of nights I've been out with friends in town because we keep forgetting it's the weekend and town is going to be full of drunken imbeciles shouting inanities at each other..

And on... Next week kicks off with Robert Sheppard and Connor O'Callaghan reading at the Bolton Octagon (there are further poetry and prose events there 27 October, 10 November, and then next year) - although for Mancunians who can't be arsed getting on a train there's a lot more capacity at Matt & Phreds for Poets and Mash.

On Wednesday (I take a day off for university on Tuesday) Adrian Mitchell is reading at [correction] The Whitworth Art Gallery as part of the Litfest [helps when I check the ticket].

Thursday is my birthday and I can sleep in having the day off work. Unfortunately I agreed earlier in the year to do a slot at Re: Verberate's How Many Poets Does It Take To Change A Light Bulb? before they had a date. I'm reading to close to the end of the night, and still haven't sorted out a set yet - but it'll be three minutes of stuff from last semester I think - it's kind of a poetry/comedy durational record breaking attempt I think so I need to stay on-topic. As far as I'm concerned this will be my last conventional reading before moving wholly into sound poetry and other noise making.

On Friday I aim to catch Vaudeville 100 at the Green Room, which should be pretty good, and on Saturday Gary performs at Womb in the Briton's Protection. On Sunday I have voluntary work, but before that I'll catch Ross Sutherland and Tim Clare with It Looks Like You're Writing A Letter and Tony Walsh with Zeroes And Ones at the Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester.

The following week so far is the next reading at the Octagon on Monday, on Tuesday university again, and on Wednesday if I remember to get tickets Jackie O Motherfucker, Gnod and a bunch of others at Studio Salford.

What I unfortunately won't be able to get to is the next Openned event in London - 7:15 p.m at the Foundry on the 21st October. The readers will be: Adrian Clarke, Francesca Lisette, Wanda Phipps, Anna Ticehurst, and Michael Zand. With Mike Weller (video work), and Allen Fisher (video interview, the first in a series). It's at The Foundry, 86 Great Eastern Street, EC2A 3JL, with the nearest tube being Old Street. If it's anything like The Other Room it'll be a great night and well worth making the effort for.

Understandably I'm probably going to be a little slower posting than I have been over the last six months for a week or so. I'll see you on the other side. I'll try and post links to all of this as soon as I've got some other bits and pieces out of the way.


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street cutlery 6

A slight error in resizing the two parts of this image means one's slightly smaller, but I don't really care. After missing two opportunities to pick up street cutlery lately, and despite not being able to photograph this actually pretty small fork in situ, it's just good to have some more street cutlery after a bit of a break.

This one was on a patch of grass in front of the nearby methodist church, and was obviously associated with a plastic food container which was lying nearby with its lid close to it. The peculiar thing is that the box and lid had been there for a couple of days, but I never noticed the spoon. It must have been in such a position that only the street light was really catching it.


As intimated a while ago I'm quite busy at present - with poetry events and friends I've been out for the last seven nights. I'll have a break tomorrow, and then a solid ten or eleven nights out.

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manchester thing

Anyone around the Rusholme, Moss Side, Hulme, or Whalley Range areas of Manchester will probably have had one of these through their door, or seen one lying on the ground somewhere. They must have been appearing for around 6 months now. I've been meaning to copy and post one for a while. You'll notice I've left off the number because I'm making the assumption that this bit of paper means exactly what it says. In which case I really hope Decent Black Male finds someone for friendship and socialising. If anyone knows anything more about this let me know.

partch : signs - visual poem

derek jarman - a tribute, part three, the last

It has taken me longer than I intended to start writing this part. I wanted to avoid the autobiographical slant of the first two parts, but when an artist becomes special to you, personal to you, it's hard to untangle your biography from your reactions. And I wasn't really sure where this part was going, or how to approach it. Obviously the intent was to persuade those of you who are not already convinced that Derek Jarman is one of the great film artists. But it wasn't clear how to go about it, in fact I was unclear until the last sentence. And the I realised: images.

Film of course is composed of images. Jarman was a painter as well as filmmaker (writer, gardner etc.). It should have been obvious, it was obvious, it was so obvious that I assumed it had already been covered. In fact I simply skirted round it. Images. Images and depth. Jarman's films are memorable. They contain such memorable images that even if you don't pay attention watching them, or hate what you see, you will find the images coming to you at strange moments.

But they are not 'painterly' images. I can think of no worse insult. 'Painterly' films are staid and boring. 'Painterly' films are pompous and slow. 'Painterly' films are too busy watching themselves to do anything interesting. 'Painterly' films are static, 'painterly' films are heritage shite, 'painterly' films are Girl With A Pearl Earring, and nobody needs that. Jarman's images are fast, or slow, or repeated and repeated and repeated and repeated and repeated. But they are vital and alive. Jarman realised that film isn't painting. It has to move and writhe and live and confound expectations in a different set of ways.

Now, as a tease, I'll end there for now, and add a little more tomorrow, or at a later date...

[19 Oct 8] Take Angelic Conversation. Very few things happen. Very few things happen extremely slowly. Very few things happen extremely slowly again and again. And out of this repetition and slowness images emerge - some of which are unique to this film, some of which crop up in other of his films, in the same form or transformed.

Smoke
A young man carrying a what might be a log on his back walks and turns in smoke. He goes nowhere. Sometimes the smoke might just be a flaw in the film, or a trick of the light. At other times it thickens, is clearly smoke from a fire. Smoke drifts through most of Jarman's films. Most notably in association with bonfires, or more often flares.

Flares
Half naked or clothed, male or female, indoors or out, in darkness or in the day, in black and white or colour, with sound or without, flares feature frequently in Jarman's film making. Having lent my copy of Angelic Conversation to a friend I can't check, but I'm sure a character, walking outdoors, and shot at least in part in colour, carries a flare along a country road.

Fire
Fire of course accompanies both these. Bonfires, flames making abstract marks against darkness like brushstrokes. Objects in the flames blackened and destroyed.

Flare
The flare of light in the lens. From mirrors, windows, flares, the sun. From the earliest Super8 footage flares of light burn his lens.

Military/Official installations
Whether it be the fences of military camps, Dungeness power station, or abandoned installations, symbols of governmental and institutional power emerge often in the films. Interestingly they are generally fairly discreet - here just a fence and what I assume is a radar device spinning on top of a building - and that only seen when the camera pulls back from a tree in blossom.

Turning
The radar device, the young man with his log, the young man swimming, the smoke in front of him, the camera round the figure walking in the road. People and objects spin, swirl and turn with constant motion in the films. Often Jarman will cut from one movement to another and all the way back through a series of movements. As this suggests his editing in often cyclical. Images from the beginning of the movie will recur throughout, particular scenes will cycle through a number of shots and back to the beginning. This is especially noticeable in The Garden where the Mary Magdalene figure is chased, turning and turning in a great arc of concrete, the female disciples ring their glasses with slowly rotating fingers, waves curl over and drop, figures with flares turn around Jarman in bed in the sea, movements of water and movements of flame are edited in close proximity, both moving in arcs.

Repetition
Turning is not the only form of return. Repetition is also return. So the young man sits at the leaded window throughout the film. The camera closes in and the camera moves away. The camera halts. The young man sits at the leaded window. Almost impossible to listen to without losing focus on the film, and in any case quiet on the soundtrack, Judi Dench's readings of some of Shakespeare's sonnets come and go. The young man continues to carry his log in the smoke.

Water
Water drips. Water is poured. Water is drunk. Characters bathe in water. Characters swim. Like a lot of these tropes you could argue that the same applies to any mainstream film. But that's missing the point. In mainstream film water, for instance, if it served a symbolic purpose would have that symbolism underlines and driven home repeatedly. Otherwise it would just be there, something incidental to the film. Jarman is more subtle. Is the water cleansing? If so, cleansing of what? Is that cleansing a good thing? Or is the water supportive? Or a symbol of birth, the family, evolution? Is the water piss? Or is it just that it gives you nice light effects, runs off skin beautifully, and slows movements? Here the character endlessly turns.

Gardens/Flowers
Flowers and gardens return again and again to Jarman's films. Their colour and forms sometimes rendered black and white, sometimes grainy. Usually they are living, blowing in breezes. An assertion of nature, often necessary to counterpoint desolate urban scenes. Or perhaps it's from Jarman's love of gardening, rediscovered late. Or a subtle fuck you to homophobes. Even into the 90's I remember characters in comics like Walter the Softy from Dennis the Menace, and Cuthbert Cringeworthy in The Bash Street Kids, both in The Beano, being portrayed as effeminate and flower-sniffing, whereas the ostensible heroes were bullies. If you weren't a poofter you might be a pansy or a fruit (perhaps a quince). Again, maybe I'm overreading. But like Bob Dylan Jarman invites this. Both are often imprecise and vague, allowing you to construct your own interpretation. And both can have a combination of specific polemic and vagueness within the same piece of work.

Angelic Conversation is perhaps my favourite Jarman film alongside Blue, although there remain a couple I have yet to see - Edward II and War Requiem. It distills most of what I love about his film making, although it necessarily lacks the frenetic editing seen especially in The Last Of England, but also in some of his other films. It is also narratively clearer than either that film or The Garden. If I have one reservation it's that Angelic Conversation could be more explicitly queer, like Sebastiane or The Garden, but I suspect that may be to miss the point of what Jarman was doing with it.

But back to the images. It distills all the recurrent images of Jarman's work listed above into a slow moving, cyclical film that goes nowhere, apparently, and takes you with it. It leaves you with these haunting images - the young man and his log in the smoke, the young man swimming, the young man sat at the window, people walking together, flowers, repetition and turning. There is perhaps a nostalgia to it that makes it perhaps a less passionate evocation of love than it might be, but there's passion to spare in the other films. And then again, I'm not sure that the degree of repetition and slowness, the unclarity of some of the images - the fact that they shimmer, dissolve into smoke, doesn't add a depth and intensity to the film that makes it more resonant and more lasting than if it were a portrait of now. Perhaps that vague sense of nostalgia allows us to tap into our own memories and regrets.

All these images are film images. They rely on duration, they rely on speed, they use light. Not the painted representation of light, but the more realistic reproduction of light achieved by projection or a tv screen. Light is reproduced by light. Paintings cannot have a specific duration controlled by the artist, their speed cannot be controlled, they do not use real light. Although Jarman was a painter he did not make painterly films, he made film maker's films. It's only a shame that so few other directors make film maker's films. The visual illiteracy and lack of imagination of the majority of film making never ceases to astound me. Perhaps his visual literacy is where Jarman the painter comes into the film making process.

What the particular symbols listed above actually mean in specific situations is a question I will never be able to answer, but one of the many reasons I'll continue to return to the films.

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afraid of sex - visual poem

possible slowdown

First up, a couple of new posts to god is a sloth:


Despite this, and as mentioned a few times previously, the likelihood is that I won't be able to keep up the level of productivity I managed over this summer across the next few months. In addition to my usual commitments I'm back at university for the second year of this part time MA, and as you will have noticed from santiago's dead wasp lately I've been making a concerted effort to get out to more poetry and other art events. Part of that is also making some fairly limping attempts at networking in an effort to get more gigs, to widen my connections, and also pursue publication. You will be kept informed, honest. And I will actually try and keep my productivity as high as I can.

In the meantime enjoy god is a sloth, Phil Ochs (below), and check out those links over at the side, they're there for a reason.

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for george w bush

Here's some Phil Ochs (and here), still relevant 40 years on:

"Tie their hands behind their backs and question thru the night."

"We're fighting in a war we lost before the war began."

White Boots Marching In A Yellow Land

And here, with some other pieces, The War Is Over:

partch : sing - visual poem

partch - visual poem

The first of two pieces based around a form that seems to have emerged from nowhere to fascinate me. I may write more about this later. It also seems have associated itself with the word partch. Initially in fact I had parch in mind, but the Harry Partch reference seemed to make a kind of sense.

Actually this is the second of three pieces. The first one, sonnet : partch was done for my MA for next week, but I may post it here later. Arguably there have been four of these, including an untitled discarded attempt which featured the form on the right, a left hand brace or curly bracket ({) to the left of that, and a dot to the left of that. But it looked awful.

notebook archaeology 18

k2 - visual poem

k - visual poem

shunting yard - visual poem

circuit bending experiment 2

Having now completely fucked my radio, and added some permanent connections I can proudly make it produce a variety of squeals and, well, strangulated farting noises. Hooray! You can "enjoy" somewhere over five minutes of this below.

circuit bending experiment 2

If you want to try this for yourself, you should. But please remember that you should only bend devices that can run on batteries, NEVER work on something connected to the mains. A good clear primer is located here. More general info and other links here.

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railway lines - visual poem

A first attempt at some of the ideas for visual work sparked by Caroline Bergvall's Plessjør, although a lot closer to the work in that book than I intend the other pieces to be. One scored line is invisible here (at least in the preview I saw). A beginning at any rate

distorted electronics loop 1

distorted electronics loop 1

Function generator, bent radio, and handbuilt mic (piezo electric transducer & plastic cup) run through LoopStation.

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circuit bending experiment 1

As I've mentioned a couple of times previously I've been arsing around with electronics recently. Here's a first experiment, not at all structured, in circuit bending. Around five minutes twenty odd seconds, but you probably won't want to sit through it all.

circuit bending experiment 1

I should be able to feed this kind of stuff through the LoopStation easily, and combine with vocals easily enough. Expect more structured pieces soon.

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radio ghost

Damn, it's late and I have work in the morning, so this will have to be brief. After a hashed job earlier in the week, scuppered by a missing part, parts in backwards and a couple of short-circuits caused by shoddy soldering, I had to go back out to electronics store and buy a new function generator kit. With some immensely improved soldering, all the parts in the right places, and many burns to my hands, I managed to assemble it and get it working. One of the LEDs isn't working, and I don't have a small enough phono jack so I'm currently using a piezo electric transducer taped to a cup and wired to the terminal block to deliver the noise, but it works, and makes a fantastic sound.

I was also able to spend more time playing with my new AM/FM transistor, having not really had the time before now. The conversation on Tuesday was pretty funny:

Housemate: What are you doing to that radio?
Me: I'm breaking it, obviously. I'm going to make a noise-maker out of it. [It would have been pointless to talk about circuit-bending, and would have just prolonged matters.]
Housemate: It already makes a noise though. [See what I mean?]
Me: Yeah, but that's shit. I want to make electronic squeals and noise.
Housemate: Right. [Possibly meaning, why?]

Anyway, having previously had no luck at all in getting anything interesting from the radio I spent a much longer time probing it today, and getting a much better feel for what I can do and how. It's curious, I wouldn't have thought it was a matter of familiarity and practice, but evidently they do play a part. So, now I have two new noise-making toys to play with in the coming weeks, and to try and slot in to my sound poetry practice. Which would be fine, but I'm also now bursting with ideas for visual poems now, going right back to basics and starting with the page. There will be something to show for this fairly shortly I think.

Wait, did I say two new noise-making toys? Not true. As previously blogged I have managed to make a couple of contact mics by soldering audio cable to piezo electric transducers. These contact mics have now been turned into vocal mics by the simple act of taping them to the bottom of plastic cups. I thought this might not work, or would only result in distortion, but the sound reproduction is not too bad actually. I will experiment with paper cups too, and with cups in different sizes, and with the transducers in different places on the cups. But I can now use these handbuilt lo-fi mics to add another element to the performance of my sound poetry. And eventually of course the aim is to incorporate bent electronics at the very least. Watch this space.

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the other room 4

At last.

[3/10/8 Links and further edits added.] Santiago went along to The Other Room 4 tonight. On his own let it be said, neither friends Helen and Gary, nor sister Hannah managed to make it along. Which is a damn shame for them because it was a fantastic night, even though I didn't really talk to anyone, and was quite tired and emotional by the end of the evening. If you've bothered to read through the notebook archaeology in situ pieces below then you have a good idea what's about to come, but why would you even have tried?

Some background. Although I like a lot of the other poetry nights in Manchester the majority of what gets performed means very little to me, I wouldn't read it given the choice. Which is NOT a reflection on the poets or their work, just a reflection of my preferences. I think almost universally the Manchester poets I've met have been really nice people, I just happen to have a love/hate relationship with all poetry, as evidenced here on a regular basis. The Other Room on the other hand is finally the kind of poetry reading I've been looking for all my adult life. Although I do have some misgivings about my own response, which we will come to later. For now, on with the review. [2 Oct 8 - Erm, originally my misgivings didn't come later. They do now.]

Joy As Tiresome Vandalism were first. A collaboration between James Davies of matchbox, and now ifpthenq fame, and a photographer whose name I've shamefully forgotten. [3/10/8 - According to this page he's Simon Taylor. I have been able to find a photographer called Simon Taylor online, but can't confirm if he's the same one.] If anyone can help I'll gladly put the omission right. They gave a multimedia presentation of aRb (aR), half of the collaboration aRb, of which aRb (Rb) is the second part. This was a project whereby starting with a poem by James Davies each artist created a piece in response to the previous piece by the other. I haven't bought a copy yet (though I ought to hurry up, it's a limited edition), but I'd certainly seen some of the images. But live, with the photos project on a screen which I couldn't see from where I was, but which were also handily stuck to the wall nearby, and the poems read aloud, the project suddenly came into focus. It took on a clear logic and the sequence made sense.

I also felt that both poems, and much more so the photos, were kind of laminated. That is they consisted of at least two or more different layers that didn't really touch other than they were in proximity. It gave the pictures especially both a clarity, and lent them an air of being unfixed, of sliding around. The photos did this individually, the poems did this individually, and together a whole motion and resultant kinetic heat were created. [2 Oct 8 - What I forgot to mention was the poem dubbit rack [Audio link - 3/10/8], which used a googled set of anagrams for 'rabbit' and 'duck' (as in the visual illusion that can be either), and a voice synthesiser to create a fascinating, barely intelligible stream of speech. I was reminded again listening this evening to Caroline Bergvall on PennSound talking about how the glitches in digital technology can be a part of the aesthetic [3/10/8 Audio link - note, interview is 45 minutes, I'm not certain where this comment comes, but the whole interview is interesting]. Something she also mentioned yesterday when she talked about having only seen Carolee Schneemann's Fuses on UbuWeb in a low quality streamed form before she wrote FUSES.]

David Annwn, whose name I think I misspelled in previous posts and will correct at a later date when I have time, gave a good performance. Though for me slightly challenging. Slightly challenging in that sometimes his work felt like it was coming perilously close to being shallow and smug - although it never did. I find it hard to explain what I mean. It's like when very conventional poets try to be clever and do a few things referencing Eliot, Stein, and some obvious twentieth century artists, but end up writing confined 'literary' work that's very self-satisfied but not very adventurous. Anyway, I've gone on about it too long. He wasn't like that at all, but at times it felt like he could easily topple over that way. As a matter of fact, getting to the point a little late, he was really good, and gave a very committed performance. This highlighted two things. Relatively slow moments were drawn attention too by the fact that his performance lifted you through any lacunae. And his work really took off at those moments when language, myth, and ideas take over from whatever the notional idea was and cause the poem to stumble and collapse in on itself. A kind of poetry of entropy I guess.

[2 Oct 8 Now David Annwn I've done a real disservice to with the review above, it's brief and wanders off the point. He gave a really good, really committed performance of humour and intelligence, referencing a number of interesting twentieth century, and more contemporary writers and artists. But to an extent his work probably suffered in comparison to the multimedia nature of Joy As Tiresome Vandalism, and the radical nature of Caroline Bergvall's work, with which I'm pretty familiar. This last point indicates one of my misgivings about my own response which I failed to deal with yesterday - that perhaps I respond best to work that I'm most familiar with, and/or committed to. David Annwn has in common with Caroline Bergvall a fascination with multi-lingualism, or at least the running up of several languages against one another. And at this point in history even those like myself who only speak one language in fact speak with the traces of many languages. In everyday English the remnants and footprints of Latin, Greek, Fresian, and French are only the best known, along with loans from German, Japanese, Indian subcontinent languages and elsewhere. He also marshalls both traditional mythology, and the more contemporary myths of avant garde and other colourful personalities, without falling into the banalities of celebrity.]

Finally Caroline Bergvall, who in a couple of senses is the reason I was there. As explored ad nauseum here it was her Fig that really set me exploring the possibilities of what poetry could do. If it hadn't been for that push I wouldn't have done a random search for 'experimental poetry manchester', or something similar, and stumbled across the Openned promotion for The Other Room 2. And she was the major reason for attending this particular night - although I would have been there anyway. She read Via: 48 Dante Variations [Audio link 3/10/8] FUSES, two of her recent Chaucer pieces: The Summer Tale and Alyson Singes [3/10/8 You can ignore the link back here - the Charles Bernstein page at EPC looked most promising, but it takes ages to load and locks up my browser, so I can't recommend it], and a piece called I think Kroppe or Cropper - again, if someone can clear up the spelling I'd be really grateful. [2 Oct 8 - I'm indebted to Paul, who told me that it is in fact Cropper, and provided a link as proof. Thanks again for that. You see, sometimes people do read this stuff.] The biggest revelation for me was Via, especially how unusual and foreign-sounding the Victorian translations were in particular. They read extremely awkwardly, as though the translators were trying so hard to be faithful to an original text that was hundreds of years old in another language that they forgot how to use English along the way. FUSES was every bit as rhythmical and pacy as I thought it would be, and justified my approach in sex are not victim [3/10/8 Background to the piece here], in my opinion. It actually wasn't during that poem, but during the Chaucer pieces that I noticed how confident a fluid a performer she actually is. There were almost no hesitation, repetitions or stumbles along the way. They were, appropriately enough, very funny as well as very clever. The final piece mixed English and Norwegian, which was interesting to hear. It's especially interesting hearing two languages spoken together when there are ambiguities about certain words. When a particular word might be a word you know in your own language, or it might in fact be something that means something different in the other language.

All that said, although the performance was impressive and did shed new light on at least one of the pieces for me Caroline Bergvall had already knocked me off my feet earlier in the evening. I bought copies of parameter magazine (review to follow soon), and Caroline Bergvall's recent book Plessjør (see post below for cover and link). In the same way that she opened a way in to all sorts of experimental practices with Fig, with this book she suddenly opened up a way of approaching visual poetry that I think will help me get a handle on the form for myself. Although I've become familiar with current practitioners like Mike Cannell, David-Baptiste Chirot, Geof Huth and Troy Lloyd [3/10/8 and Nico Vassilakis, who was in the notebook, but somehow didn't make it here - go figure], and with others like bpNichol over the last five months - and although I did make some attempts early in the summer at visual poetry, I'd come to think that it was something I'd never manage. Turns out I was thinking too high-tech. I need to go back to inks and soft pencils, to paints and miscellaneous surfaces. I need to go analogue, as it were, and find out what I can feel in my hand and taste in my mouth. If I can't connect like that then there's no point. Just as there would be no point in copying what's in the book. I'm going to go off an experiment on my own for a bit.

And joy of joys, as you see below, The Other Room is back 3 December at the earlier time of 7pm with Scott Thurston, Tony Trehy, and Carol Watts. [3/10/8 Really, be there, or the shame will be on the heads of your children, and your children's children.]

[2 Oct 8 - There were a couple of things I wanted to discuss yesterday but never got round to because it was pretty late. The first and most important of these was my concern that my response to readers in this or any forum is coloured by what I already know of the work. Partly this was prompted by finding it difficult to understand a lot of what was going on in David Annwn's work, even though a lot of it was probably clearer that some of the work by Joy As Tiresome Vandalism, and certainly by Caroline Bergvall. Attentive readers may also have noticed that a common tic I have in reviews of poetry performances is to say that I'd like to see it on the page to better understand it. Now this is kind of a code, but it's a very broad code. Sometimes it means just that, that I liked the work on the whole, but didn't really get everything from it I wanted, and would like to see it in a different form where I could familiarise myself with it at my leisure. But it can also mean that the poetry was dull, or that the performance was dull, or that both the poetry and the performance were dull, or that frankly it was bloody awful but I'm too much of a wuss to come out and say it. But back to the point. There's probably no way round this dilemma, even when you like new sensations and testing yourself you will still often find yourself gravitating to things that you are more familiar with, and that you feel comfortable with. And of course the more familiar you are with a piece already the less hard you have to concentrate to get anything from it. But perhaps it might have been better if David Annwn had really annoyed me - after all it was only through trying to figure out what irritated me about Caroline Bergvall's work that I figured out that it was a combination of difficulty, unfamiliarity, and a challenge to the artistic values I'd accepted largely unquestioningly for years. Ultimately leading me to appreciate the work much more.

One of the other things I wrote in my notebook was that I often feel like my understanding of the work I like is quite shallow. I'm not wholly sure that I properly understand it, or that I could even ask intelligent questions if someone said interview this writer. I still read, react to pieces, write and perform in a very visceral and instinctive way. I act or respond, and think about it later. I can't decide whether this matters. Probably not, as I do a great deal of analysis afterwards, but nonetheless, when people are all around wielding their vocabulary like a light-sabre and showing off their avant garde familiarity I can't help but feel marginalised.

Finally, although we didn't really talk for any length of time, another of the tutors at Bolton, Zoe Lambert (after Matthew Welton last time) who takes the fiction group, was at The Other Room this time. I'll provide links to her published work etc on the weekend. None of the other students though. I've seen one at The Other Room 2, and a couple of the BA students were there, but none of them have been again that I'm aware of. I will continue to make space in my diary for it as long as it continues though - I'm going to cling on to it like a security blanket. [3/10/8 Also there was Geraldine Monk, who read at the first event, which I missed.]]

4 Oct 8 - PS
A welcome comment on this post from James, which I'll feature in full:

"We can't and wouldn't ever want to change the poetry but the night is definitely meant to be all inclusive in terms of conversation after and during. I agree that a problem with conceptual work is that often it is referential to a whole bunch of stuff - and this should if possible not be obscure but be more generalised in my opinion - be about the poetry, not about some obscure and often mundane interest. I can only see it as exciting to make discoveries but if the poetry is simply finding out the answer to some pompous riddle then screw it."

I wholly agree with this, although sometimes from my quasi-mystical ramblings you might find it difficult to tell. It also draws attention to something I hadn't noticed, which is that the post read as though I were suggesting that some of the audience and some of the poets at The Other Room were occupying some rareified space of pure poetry and concept. Or worse still as though I were the subject of the post, a plucky outsider bringing back despatches from an anthropological field trip. Neither of these is true. I have found the atmosphere welcoming and friendly, there is no need to arm yourself with a field guide to the avant-garde and conceptualism, and I enjoy going because the poetry's good. Every time I've been it's been very well attended. My only regret is that with my appalling shyness I don't talk to more people - and on a night like this one, with no friends or family in support, didn't feel able to go along to the 'after-party' - my problem and nobody else's. As it is this has to be my main method for participating in that conversation and communicating my excitement about the work.

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notebook archaeology in situ - i-iii

Have you noticed this blog isn't making a lot of sense lately? Yeah, me too. It's all the social contact y'know. These are the pages that will lead to the post above. Oh yes.

plessjør

Am I going to be sued for breach of copyright? Honestly I'm too tired to care. This is the cover of the latest Caroline Bergvall book I've added to my collection after tonight's reading (see next post but one). It's great. Go buy if you see it. And watch out for my post above, the other room 4, for more on this.


More details from here if you read Norwegian.

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flyers

Erm, yeah. If you're in Manchester for either of these then get along to them. I was going to call this post upcoming manchester events, until I realised that was setting up expectations I couldn't deliver. I'm not a listings service and never will be. So there.


If you have to chose between the two and can only come to one, then I'd advise it be The Other Room. Nothing against the other guys, but The Other Room will hurt in all the right places. Guaranteed. And the actual flyer doesn't have that charming Moire effect.

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