Happy New Year From Japan's Propaganda Dept (1939)

New Year's postcards sold in Japan. From Life magazine, Feb, 1939

Howl Now - J. Jeff Jones / The Savoy Book / Vispo: Mechanised?

 

J. Jeff Jones updates Ginsberg's Howl poem in The Savoy Book, published in 1978. Once upon a time I also began a poem with the line 'I saw the best minds of my generation' but have no memory of the rest of it. No, no - that's wrong - I remember nothing. What I have is a recording of the performance, which I haven't played for years. But I remember my voice trails off in a possibly drunken slur after 'generation'.

Success could not destroy me. I never give it the chance. Not that you decide to be successful. Successful at what though?

A practical apprenticeship?

Novel writing?

Mass homicide?

There's so much to be successful at.

Yet.

Yet.

Do you ever wonder, seeing someone in the street, if they've succeeded in anything? Creating a baby, perhaps.

Or earning lots of money.

And on and on and on.

The Savoy Book is very good. It has an interview with Brian Aldiss, fiction by Harlan Ellison and M. J Harrison, great illustrations etc.

*

RTomens, 2024

The other day I thought 'I really should describe what people are seeing' when I post art because...you know...it's wrong of me to assume that it's clear or that they can work it out for themselves. Nothing's clear or obvious, necessarily, in a world where AI exists. As you know, AI can create anything (except good cakes? cups of tea? I dunno). By what people are seeing I mean what it's made of and how it's made, perhaps...what's know as the 'medium' in the Fine Arse world. Or media? The process? 

For the record. So you know. So you know it's not something I made by feeding information into software. Mechanised? consists of a printed background and altered photo of a dubious character's mugshot which I typed onto. That's it.

TTFN

JG Ballard: First Edition Berkley Medallion Books - Financial Concern button switched off!

 

Suddenly, for some reason, money didn't matter.

Something clicked.

It was my Financial Concern button, which I changed from 'On', as it usually is, to 'Off'.

Having done so, I began buying books.

I bought as if it might all end next week. As if a comet large enough to smash the planet to smithereens was on course to do so and no amount of action by either superpower could do anything about it. 

There are no pockets in a shroud, right?

Not that the Ballard books pictured were expensive (that's relative, isn't it?). They were actually cheaper as a job lot than any others I'd seen online. Cheaper individually, that is. A friends asked 'But you have them, don't you?' Meaning the stories. Yes, I do, but as any book-lover knows, sometimes it's about the editions. I am not, mind you, an obsessive collector of editions. But I couldn't resist these.

With the FC button still switched off, I proceeded to scour the internet and found several more books. I may show them to you in the future.

I also struck a deal with a book dealer via email. 

I was high on buying.

Now I'm flying nearly every day as I eagerly await the post. High too on having so many great new books and magazines to explore.

The FC button has been switched on again. It must, after all, remain on by default, otherwise I'd be broke.

I can browse charity shop shelves with the FC button on, no worries, since nothing costs more than £3, usually.

Online however, as you know, is an endless shop stuffed with goodies. It's where you can usually find  what you're after but the price...oh the prices!...can sometimes be far too much.

For now I'm being 'good'. 

New booklet: Mind Games

Here is the new book. 56 pages featuring faces and figures. Full colour. £12 plus p&p. Posts worldwide. Very limited print run. Please contact me at rtomens@gmail.com if interested.

Vispo: Self-censorship

RTomens, 2024

 

Album of the Week: Rian Treanor with Rotherham Sight & Sound - Action Potential

Using software synths designed by Rian Treanor and Mark Fell, visually impaired pensioners Anne Goss (75), Kathleen Allott (74) and Mick Gladwin (65) aka Rotherham Sight & Sound, have made what for them is truly liberating music. They've been practising for a while and now Action Potential is out on Treanor's label, Electronic Music Club. They even played Cafe Oto (see clip below), but don't hold that against them for this is no hipster project. 

Worthiness (in the best sense) aside, what they've created is a joyous selection of seven tracks, comparable to Autechre, if they were really 'free' - ha-ha. An atmosphere of play pervades, like the best Improv,  minus the studious 'intellectual' attitude. Hold has a 'Ragga' feel and consistent rhythms frequently come into play, but elsewhere they cut loose, as on When It Ends and the following 30 Seconds, the latter sounding like the best early electronic 'space music'. The way the last track, 1 Dial, drops off into a percussive black hole is fantastic. 

Buy it here

'Freedom to do what we want'...

Collage: Disinterested?

RTomens, 20119

 

Print/Vispo: You Were Never Really There

RTomens, 2024

 

Vispo: Amount To Something / Jorge Luis Borges, G.K.Chesterton and falling out with 'friends' /Three types of Rain (Dark, Text & real)

RTomens, 2024

*

I've given up trying to be smarter than I already am. Perhaps, once upon a time, long ago, I tried. I may have tried in my twenties, for the very first time. What did that entail? Reading 'smart' books. Or were they just books by smart people? Smart people can't write terrible books, but they can write ones you find boring...incomprehensible, annoying etc.

It's not as if we fall into comprehensive categories, is it? That brain surgeon is hopeless at DIY and that rocket scientist can barely dress properly. Can we therefore call them smart? Really? Is there a total person, adept at practical and intellectual tasks?

You may watch lumps of flesh pounding the pavements as I often do outside a cafe and think 'Brainless idiot!' But you're being cruel. Supposing they were as brainless as they appear; it isn't their fault. They were dealt a hand at birth? Environment? Parents? Socio-economic situation? And even if it is their fault because they never once tried to learn anything except the basics such as walking and eating, it was their choice.

A few weeks ago I thought I'd challenge myself by reading Jorge Luis Borges. The Labyrinths collection had been sitting on my shelf for years but I didn't just start reading that, oh no, I bought The Complete Fictions. I was quite serious. It's chronological so, to begin with, A Universal History of Iniquity (1935). I read all the stories. Then Fictions (1945) and the 'story', Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius...dammit! I was defeated...I fell at the first real hurdle, closing the book with a sigh and, you might imagine, if I was a cartoon character, steam hissing from my ears. Pah! I've not given up on Borges and will return to him as soon as I've got over this...event.

So I turned to another recent purchase, bought because of Borges, who was a fan of G.K.Chesterton's Father Brown stories. Again, I bought the complete collection in one volume and read the first, The Blue Cross, which I enjoyed. How could you not enjoy such a refreshing approach to the crime story and a masterful display of writing? Then halfway through the second story, The Secret Garden, it dawned on me that I had lost the plot. Or to try and be more precise, lost track of the characters involved. Oh please...

Am I really so stupid?

I blame the internet. As part of the bridging generation, from no-internet life to internet life, I move from addiction to resistance. A common scenario, I'm sure. I check in online frequently, but rarely stay long. Long enough though, it seems, to become another victim of concentration deficit. Bah! 

Unfortunately, the internet being my gallery without walls, I must tune in regularly. If not for my art, perhaps I would visit less often. Then again, as a virtual hermit, socially, I might have to go online to talk to 'friends'. I've heard people describe books as their 'friends' and thought, 'How sad that is', yet I'm in no better position, perhaps even worse since my ability to engage with even those 'friends' seems to be rapidly diminishing! 

*

Yesterday as I waited for the bus...'it was cold and it rained and I felt like an actor' so I looked into a puddle and took a photo. 

I've been listening to other types of rain, Black Rain and (appropriately, considering my 'art' and struggles with reading), Rain Text. Black Rain are a new discovery for me but they began in 1992. I can't say what, if anything, marks them out from all the other Dark/Techno/Ambient artists, but they have something that I find...engaging...satisfying. Perhaps it's that balance between the genres that they put together so well. That or the fact that, recently, with the onset of Autumn, their music suits the mood I frequently find myself in. 

Rain Text are Giuseppe Ielasi & Giovanni Civitenga. III is their first album, just released on SAGOME. Don't rush to judgment should you decide to give it a casual liste and skip through - no, give it time - that's it - relax with a cup of tea, light a pipe, put your feet up, clamp on or insert the headphones...and you'll find a lot more going on than may first appear. How can I put it? The compositions may not be packed with complexities or heavyweight sonics, so it seems, yet there's much to be said for the way the pair juggle sounds, jiggle sounds, even, from percussive patterns to concrete pavement gritty ambience; perfect soundtracks for moody weather...even, to borrow the film title, a seance on a wet afternoon.

Collage: Taking Notes / Morricone Art Ensemble mix up

RTomens, 2024

I hope you're all taking notes...is probably what a teacher once said in class...and I didn't...because school was a house of horrors to me, filled with terrifying subjects, such as Maths (double Maths was an excuse/motivation to leave the school grounds by the rear exit, walk into town and browse in the local record shop...yes, that's how I got where I am today!). 

Another horror: the chance of being thumped by a bully. I was the original 7 stone weakling Charles Atlas body-building ads were aimed at. I should have taken the course, except that, had I built myself a body like his perhaps I would have got into more fights and, inevitably, lost some because, like gunslingers in the Old West, there's always someone faster/stronger/meaner. 

Have you ever confused Ennio Morricone with the Art Ensemble of Chicago? Come on, admit it, you have. No, you've never been listening to one of Ennio's spaghetti soundtracks and thought it was the AEC, of course. You might, however, have been listening to the AEC, on shuffle, which later served up Ennio's Dialogo from Dimensioni Sonore 7 and thought 'It's the Art Ensemble again'...as I did ten minutes ago. Here's the track...

I don't want to say it again because I've told a lot of people but in case you're one who doesn't know. Ennio Morricone made some astounding 'avant-garde' music for 70s Italian horror films (sorry if I'm being patronising towards you). Also, the track above is from recording made for RCA in 1972. An epic release split with Bruno Nicolai. Both created fantastic sounds fusing Jazz with electronic mood pieces and orchestral modernism yada-yada. Treat yourself for Christmas, why don't you. Take note!