Vispo print: Mindswap / Shadows - a science-fiction collage novel - excerpt / Spider-Man by John Byrne & Spidey vibes by Freddie McCoy + Bobby Hutcherson

Mindswap, RTomens, 2026

*

Shadows (excerpt)

Pale shades of evening...naïve, twitching, tottering citizens animated by the profound and the puerile...jerky shadows...the procession of twisted corpses...strange beings damned alive...all must endure in the grave city.

   Tongues are heard far away in the universe...

   Time and space devour the damned...cold stars flash mechanically...

   From the shores of death....I am the dagger and the wound... 

   Abstract thoughts...turning the individual...influencing a person's behaviour. 

   Past forms are charged with madness, the poison flows...a sad tomorrow...perceptions of reality continue to influence a person's attitudes...victims and executioners meet memories of the past...

Feet scurried in the yard.  I held my gun steady, barrel pointing up toward the sky. I could see a single star above.  Suddenly a gaunt yellow face hid the star from my view. The face started to shout and I fired. The face disintegrated and I jumped straight up, put a foot on the edge of the can and vaulted over.

   A chorus of shrill yells came from various parts of the yard. Flashlight beams flitted about. I stepped over the body of the Chinaman who lay alongside the garbage can and darted across the yard. From the window above, Foh Shen-Li shouted in shrill sing-song dialect, “Shoot! Shoot now! He must not escape!”

   I swung my gun up and took a pot-shot at the sound of  Shen-Li’s voice but missed because wood splintered the framework of the window up there.

   Lead winged past me. One slug tore at my sleeve but I reached the fence unwounded. 

   A dark shape hurtled at me and I straight-armed that shape with the hand that held the gun. The shape yelped and collapsed.

   I hoisted myself up on a garbage can alongside the fence and jumped. Shouts rose to a tumultuous crescendo behind me; a gun barked from the window above and just at that moment my foot caught on a projecting nail as I was clearing the fence. My arms went out wildly into the air and I hurtled over into the next yard. I landed heavily on concrete, the breath knocked out of me for the second. Then I got up and felt about for my gun which I had dropped when I fell, picked it up, and sped away through the yard, down an alley...

*

Spider-Man and Havoc 205, 1987

When I came across vibraphonist Freddie McCoy's Spider Man album from 1966 I thought it must have been to cash in on the TV series but that didn't debut until '67 so we can only assume that Freddie was simply a fan of Marvel comics and Spider Man in particular. Either way, arch publicist Stan Lee must have loved the fact that Spidey graced an album sleeve and a Jazz one at that. I wonder what the artist, Steve Ditko, thought. Not that Freddie exactly oozes Jazz chops on this album. It's a lightweight affair, aimed at who, I don't know. The tracks are all brief, having little space for anyone to do much more that briefly solo before returning to the tune. Bachelor pad music, perhaps.

I did warn you; Bobby Hutcherson, it isn't, although I could imagine it going down well in the kinds of Jazz clubs I went to in 80s Soho. This is Bobby Hutcherson...

TTFN

Vispo/print (for sale): No Disagreement / Bonkers weather / Sonny Rollins an' all that Jazz / My Jazz book

 

No Disagreement, RTomens, 2026

A4 on 160gsm paper

For sale: £90
please email if interested

rtomens(at)gmail.com

Here's a print from a typed original which has been typed over again. Sorry if that sounds confusing but I'm half-awake. I typed the face then printed on a copy of that piece and typed on it again. Is that any clearer? Do I know what I'm talking about...?...ha-ha-ha! 

It's June and I have my winter jumper on because here in London the maximum temperature today is predicted to be 16c dropping to 14 this afternoon...FFS! Two weeks ago we were in the middle of a heatwave! Do such swings in the weather affect one's state of mind? What do you think? Everyone perks up when we get the first warm, sunny Spring days. Then extreme (for the UK) heat can confine you to the flat (it does me anyway...I mean...have you tried being on the 390 bus in the Summer? Of course you haven't, but suffice to say it's illegal to transport animals in those temperatures. So now we get cosy in the evening...under blankets...in June!

Sadly, Sonny Rollins passed away recently (well, we all gotta go sometime - except Marshall Allen, who's 102!). Sonny was one of the big hitters in Jazz, in case you didn't know. He played tenor saxophone. Getting into Jazz in the early 80s as I did his muscular tone would boom and bounce around my bedsit, filling the tiny space with fluid sonic contortions, the likes of which were still fairly new to me. This was one of the first albums of his that I bought. 

I probably got it from Ray's Jazz Shop on Shaftsbury Avenue. Here I am looking in the window circa '81. 

Well, you know, we thought Jazz was the coolest thing in the world...which it was...therefore full engagement with it made us the members of the Coolest Gang in the World! (heh-heh). 

Twenty years later I got around to writing a book about Jazz. Or to be more precise, my experience of Jazz. It's called Points of Departure and there's a review here. Despite learning a lot from the expert writers and even some academics I could never profess to be either so my writings had to come from a purely personal perspective, in the tradition of fanzines. Jazz is, after all, like all artforms, about our subjective interpretation...as we see and hear it. 

It's been said by others and even myself, that my visual poetry often feels like an extension of all that Jazz..it's influence and inspiration if not exactly the improvisational technique. If I had the typewriter equivalent of Sonny Rollins' chops...I'd be a master of the art!

TTFN!

Vispo: Dreaming Ground / In the mood with Cecil Taylor

Dreaming Ground, RTomens 2026

Some days that mood just comes over you, doesn't it? You know the one...you're in the mood for some Cecil Taylor. So it was for me this morning, to accompany my typing and drawing...

...the album is Nefertiti, the Beautiful One Has Come. 

What could be more appropriate to my improvisational key-tapping than Cecil Taylor 'tapping' his? As his fingers wander, so do mine. If only I could tap into the maverick's genius for variations hammered out of the eighty-eights! Sadly, I can't. Never mind. Could Cecil make visual poetry? Probably, if he had put his mind to it. I've long felt that his Excursion On A Wobbly Rail is a perfect title for not only my typed wandering but also my life.

Love & Napalm: Export U.S.A - JG Ballard / The Magic of Ju-Ju skull connection - Archie Shepp / Burroughs' cut-ups and concrete poetry

 

Continuing the JG Ballard theme (see last post), here's a Christmas present...from me to me - ha! Well, I swear it was comparatively cheap by at least £100, so I treated myself to this 1972 Grove Press first American edition. OK, it doesn't have the annotations by Ballard included in the Flamingo 2001 paperback but...look at that cover! Plus, it a hardback...it's a lovely size...it's so good-looking! You can over-indulgence in food at Christmas, but never books.

The painted skull by Alan Winston used for Love & Napalm: Export U.S.A. was also used five years earlier for Archie Shepp's album, The Magic Of Ju-Ju. Winston isn't credited in the book. I don't know about the album. I used to have it on vinyl but it went years ago, along with many others I've sold. Once upon a time I listened to a lot of Free Jazz and the title track of the album certainly is 'free'. But gradually I listened to it less until it then got to the stage where I joined the common listener in finding it bloody annoying! I'll dip in now and again, these days, but generally you could say my taste in Jazz has got more 'conservative'. 

When it comes to literature though, I suppose my taste is...'radical' (?), alongside genre fiction. Ballard's novel would certainly be considered radical amongst most people and The Atrocity Exhibition (it's UK title) his most adventurous work regarding structure. 

Ballard was a big fan of William Burroughs, as I'm sure you know. I see a connection between Burroughs' cut-up novels and concrete poetry when it comes to disrupting structures of 'normal' poetry and text generally to shape new images, new ideas and ways of looking at words and letters. A connection can also be made between Eduardo Paolozzi's 'sampled' texts and Burroughs, then to The Independent Group (of which Paolozzi was a member) and their influence on Ballard. That whole 'scene' inspires me greatly, from This Is Tomorrow to Abba Zaba, Moorcock's New Worlds magazine and British art in the 60s. 

Eduardo Paolozzi at New Worlds: Science Fiction and Art in the Sixties is highly recommended. The best place to buy it is here.

TTFN

Collage: Any Resemblance / My Year In Music on Spotify

 

RTomens, 2023

*

It's the time of year people compile lists of their favourite books/films/albums of 2023, isn't it? Yes, I would...I might...if I had a memory left. Besides, my Favourite Books of 2023 would be a very short list. Ditto Film. Etc. So, thank god for Spotify because it can remember my musical year for me. or rather, it logs it. It knows everything about my listening habits. Slightly disturbing...slightly...in a way...the thought it 'it' keeping track...you know, the way technology does...

So because you're just dying to know, here's what I listened to and for how long and who etc...

Is this a long time spent listening to music? 

Surprisingly, my concentration is 'absolute'...well, I'm showing my age, I suppose. You know, I come from the pre-(computer)historic era, when we listened to albums all the way through...because we'd saved our money, gone to shops and bought the vinyl, therefore the effort required naturally meant we played the whole damned thing...no skipping through...no temptation to skip to another album...no easy way out...and sometimes, yes, the album hadn't been played in the shop and it turned out to be a dud so we had to skip back to the shop to change it...imagine that, kids! 

My top genres as burger contents - huh! It ain't fast food, y'know! Perhaps the burger graphic is apt for what most people listen to...yeah (he says, snobbishly) the musical equivalent of fast food! Seeing this I got to thinking that I may be on the rarer side of Spotify listeners, mainly, no, partly because the audience for Acousmatic music worldwide must be relatively small, but also because the types who listen to that and Experimental music are a snooty bunch who shun what they see as shameful streaming as opposed to buying vinyl or even CDs. Correct? I don't know. They're very serious about music...they support artists and labels...they relish the design, the type of card, the booklets that accompany albums...they have more spare cash than me too. I'm glad they do because they support labels with cash, whereas I just stream. Needs must.

It's not easy finding other people with similar taste...except for a few online, who I have a fake Friendship with. In ye olde days we naturally bonded over music, you know? Friends met in bars, clubs and gigs, naturally being into the same things, or similar. But they were real people, not names on a screen. It transpires that I should move to Berkeley, USA, if I want a good chance of bumping into musical soulmates. Spotify told me. I don't know what Brian Eno's doing in there because I don't listen to him that much. Sun Ra and Miles Davis, though, are two of my Most Listened To artists of all-time, probably.

Who did I listen to most in 2023? Well, look who it is...Conrad Schnitzler....I'm a Top 0.005% fan! I can't even work out what that means. Hello Conrad. 

So there it is, my musical year. 

Today I listened to another album all the way through...because I'm crazy like that. Here's a classic of electronic music from 1970 by Oskar Sala...

Vispo: Not That Type / Me and my shadow / Vispo: Meaningless / The Art Ensemble of Camden and Chicago

RTomens, 2022

 Yes, a remix of another thing I did that was pure type this time made via digital trickery using electrickery - remember Catweazel? of course you don't, you're too young.

*

I'm cycling - it's dark - streetlamp light makes my shadow and reminds me of my dad, who also cycled to Work wearing a cap - the shadow could be him - I could be him - I wear an overcoat, collar turned up, looks just like the donkey jacket he wore in Winter - how old was he when I remember him? Snapshots through the decades...but when he's cycling to Work and my shadow is him he's...50? Maybe 60. Always 'the old man' - now I'm his age when I think my shadow looks like him - 63 and his whole working life in England spent at the London Brick Company since he came over from Latvia after the war...

I talk with someone about fate, destiny, circumstantial effects on behaviour and the path your life takes...can't resist mentioning that without Hitler I wouldn't be here but it would be a bit too...inconsiderate to say "The world should be grateful to Hitler for my existence and what pleasure I give through my Art!" Ha-ha - it wouldn't be funny.

*

RTomens, 2022

And so to the Art of Improvisation - you know, I had an idea to form the Art Ensemble of Camden the other day whilst doing the washing up - trouble is, I'd have to tolerate watercolour paintings of Hampstead Heath and Scenes From The Market and suchlike - no doubt - I couldn't run an Art group - Street Art too, probably! Bansky has a lot to answer for. All around Camden there are Bansky-like depictions of Her Majesty the Queen Amy Winehouse. Somewhere there's a statue. "Where's the Amy Winehouse stature?" they ask in the shop. I don't know (politely refrain from adding "And I don't fucking care.").

I might create The Art Ensemble of Camden just for a laugh - no advertising - just the name - copyright it...put my art on trees and lampposts with the logo on it to fool people into thinking there really is an AEC - different style to form the full illusion, although my watercolour rendition of Camden Square at Dusk would be terrible - then again, so what? Art For The People! Even those who can't paint but try to be 'realistic'...even do Figurative. 

And so to Meaningless, which is almost totally 'improvised', by which I mean made up as I went along even more than usual because I had spare energy to spend on the typewriter keys and just wanted to cover the page - you see? You could call it Total Improv as opposed to Partial Improv (my usual style) - I make it up as I go along, no planning, no predetermined structure in my noodle but what starts to happen is a structure determined by Improv and with that in mind I create something of a structure - geddit?

So as I listen to Roscoe Mitchell of the Art Ensemble of Chicago I wonder how much he's 'making up' and what the hell the art of Improvisation entails in the chops of a musician...thinking, if I understand correctly, that within the...bars (?) he can wander at will - no, no, that's for Be-Boppers, fitting it into a tune whereas the AEC work in vast open fields to be filled with sounds, usually. Like the Free folk, but unlike the Free folk the AEC also made tunes or even melodic as hooks on which to hang their sonic travels sometimes - hence their slogan: Great Black Music - Ancient To The Future.

Did I tell you about the time I met the AEC's trumpeter, Lester Bowie, in the bar at Ronnie Scott's? I wanted to ask him about his kaleidoscopic sound ideas containing the silliest brass farts and most poignant heartache lonely-people-of-New York parts - but I was struck dumb and stupid, so I didn't. I saw them 'live' a few times. Yes, some of my fondest concert memories. Here's a very big comp of them and associated configurations...

Vispo: Lost / On getting lost in Art, good and bad / Chet Baker

RTomens, 2022

Get lost.

Lost in music?

Lost in Art?

A friend recently told me that Chet Baker's Let's Get Lost was a favourite song of his, citing it in relation to his recent move from one country to another.  I'm not sure what he meant, other than the intention to 'lose' himself by moving? Perhaps his idea is to lose his old self, shed it like an old skin.

'Lost' can be taken either way. To be lost in music is to suggest a sublime submission to sounds which envelop you to the point of rendering awareness of the self and surroundings unimportant, non-existent. The same could be said of getting lost in Art during the process of creation. Such focus shoves time to one side too. You're not watching the clock. You're unaware of minutes passing. 

Then again, you can simply get lost in a piece of Art, meaning you have no sense of direction. Then comes the dreaded pause which stretches out as you contemplate the next move. To stop and think is good, but to have the flow stemmed by doubt and indecision is not.

Usually, if I get lost in the negative sense, I know it's over. I know that the route I was taking was leading nowhere and all I can do is rip the sheet from the typewriter, screw it up and throw it in the bin. That doesn't happen often. I go with the flow and usually it works. What works? Whatever process is at work...whatever it is that's sparkling in my head and directing my fingers.

The other day in the shop someone was holding a copy of Yes I Know, talking quietly to his female friend about it. I decided to interject or, even, interact, since business was slow. No, he'd never heard of Visual Poetry. he said he understood some of the pages but not others (smiling). We got onto ambiguity and he agreed that it was a good thing too. I explained how the pieces were made, the different processes required depending on the type of typewriter, to be precise, the size of the carriage. He bought it, even though I wasn't giving him the hard sell.

I haven't looked back thought Yes I Know for a long time. Perhaps I fear seeing things I'm not so keen on. What cannot be seen, by anyone, including me, is how lost I would get in the making of the art. Emerging from being lost, there is the finished piece. It may no longer seem fresh to me, but for new buyers it and Visual Poetry are still proving to be new territory that appeals.

Print: Bridge / Yes I No booklet / Frank Dunlop drum solo

RTomens, 2017

Bridge is so old that looking at it now I can't even remember how I did it - ha-ha! True. Although, if I stared hard and long enough the method might come back to me...

LJ has a theory that simply by moving books, adjusting their position a little, you can spark a sale. She might be right. She does work in the shop sometimes and can testify to her theory. I know what she means. It's as if by activating the book you send out...er...vibrations through the book-buying universe, ma-a-an, and attract people. Another way, of course, is to actually put the bloody book on the shelf! Last week I was rummaging around in the back room when I spied Cervantes' Don Quixote on the top shelf. The top shelf! No copies out in the shop. So I grabbed the pincers, reached up and prised it from its place, put it where it belonged and, yes, it sold about half an hour later. That made my day. I felt I'd done some good in the world.

Yesterday I rescued one of my own books, Yes I No (pictured above) from where it lay, sandwiched between other Art books, which is where the person working after me had put it. And from where it would never sell in a million years, being a little thing amongst big volumes on Henry Moore or whoever. I slipped a strip of card inside, on top of which I wrote 'Concrete Poetry', then I stood it facing out in front of Byron (ha-ha). Well, it amused me, as did the idea that anyone might know what the hell Concrete Poetry is. I got on with my work, which is distributing kulchur to the masses, which includes refraining from saying "Do you know what the hell you're getting involved with?" when they buy William Burroughs' Naked Lunch (as they frequently do, actually). 

It got to about twenty minutes from closing time when a girl placed a book called Jazz Poems on the counter along with Yes I No! Whoopee! I told her it was my work. She said she thought it looked 'cool' or something, smiling; then asked if I'd sign it, which I did. I hope she enjoys it. Fitting, I thought, that my work should be paired with Jazz poetry. Not that she would have known that I'm partial to Jazz. One commentator even suggested that Jazz informs my work somehow. I don't think he was wrong. Just how it does is a matter for another day, perhaps. 

Talking of Jazz, if you don't like drum solos, look away now. I discovered this fantastic clip of  Frank Dunlop this morning. The art of building a great solo right here...

Vispo: Toothless / The Penguin Guide To Jazz reborn! / My psychic powers are tested

 

RTomens, 2021

Post-production scanological trickery applied to the original. Chance is such an interesting tool. Chance, that is, with the appliance of some experience. In Toothless, paper plays a part, adding tonal variations and the effects of being folded.

*

The day after a copy of The Penguin Guide To Jazz On CD (Third Edition) arrived in the post, I dipped into The Anatomy of Bibliomania by Holbrook Jackson, which is essential reading for every bookworm. On page 121 Adam Smith is quoted as saying that 'of all the amusements of old age, the most grateful and soothing is a renewed acquaintance with the favourite studies of youth'. How appropriate, then, that I should have been reading the Penguin Guide that very morning! 

   I was not only reacquainting myself with a book, the first edition of which I wore out in the 90s (it was first published in 1992) but it's subject matter too. Not that I have ever left Jazz behind since embarking on 'the voyage' in the 80s, but reading, as I was, the Count Basie section, my interest in that band was also renewed. That's what great guides do, isn't it? Cook and Morton were harsh (or honest) in their judgements, which meant that four-star evaluations were taken more seriously. I don't agree with all of their recommendations, naturally, but in the age of Spotify, where band members are not listed, it's great to have them to hand and more to the point be able to find the music at the click of a mouse. 

*

Monday 27th in the bookshop: a woman asks if we sell tarot cards. We don't.

Tuesday 28th: another woman comes in and asks if we have any tarot cards! What's going on? An hour later, a woman asks if we have any books on astrology. 

My psychic powers are probably...weak-to-non-existent (how are yours?), so when, also on Tuesday, a girl wanted me to recommend a novel that would make her cry, I was unable to comply. Stupid bloody request! How do I know what will set her blubbering?! A book has never made me cry. I'm a man! (ha-ha). 

   I glanced up to the top shelf behind her, thinking that if that three-volume Helena Blavatsky box was to fall on her head, she'd certainly cry. She would be moved to tears by the weight of some serious theosophical thinking! Having read a bit about Blavatsky I'm curious as to what she wrote and will get on the footstool, dust off the set and have a look next week. Better handle it carefully, though, because it's worth a lot of money. For a laugh, I may even put it on prominent display somewhere and if that gets it sold I'll want a cut! What are the chances? You never know.

   Meanwhile, wanna-cry girl is smiling at me, expecting a result (because, hey, I work in a bookshop, don't I?). Idiotically (when I should have just shrugged and claimed ignorance) I wander over to the Fiction, thinking all the time that it really was a lost cause. Then I recalled crying during the film version of The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje and, lo and behold, we had a copy. I scanned the back. Hmm...sounds too...intelligent(?) for her, but what the hell. I told her the film had me in tears. She takes it. I take my leave. Half an hour later she buys a contemporary novel by a woman I'd never heard of and can't remember. It looked far more like the kind of story that would have her inn tears than anything I could recommend. 

   JP Donleavy's A Fairy Tale of New York had me in tears of laughter, as did Tragically I was an Only Twin: The Complete Peter Cook, but those weren't the kind of salty droplets this girl craved, obviously.

Up above my head, I see trouble in the air

 

'Leave me alone. I'm reading!'

Do you know where the expression 'Bird brain' comes from? It's because they shit on books. OK, so I'm tarring them all with the same brush. I only have evidence of starlings shitting on books, but it's likely that any bird would do the same, given the chance, except, perhaps, crows, which are supposed to be smart. Unfortunately, they're not smart enough to realise that there's an endless supply of food scraps to be had from humans stuffing their faces at Camden Market whilst starlings are. They sit in the rafters of the overhanging balcony outside Black Gull Books, passing judgement on humanity's efforts to impart information and entertainment by shitting on our cultural achievement! That's what they think of us and our so-called civilisation! They mock us - I hear them chattering away to each other: "Pathetic humans! There, that's what I think of books! Now let's get some food from them." 

I don't know what starling shit is comprised of but it's resistant to merely being cleaned off with, say, a baby wipe - they laugh at ingredients such as sodium benzoate! I know, having tried twice on different jackets, one of which is dark blue. No use. So I could only pose all day as a filthy bohemian book seller - they are a breed, you know, the last of their kind, sadly; a generation of dealers with a devil-may-care attitude towards any kind of sartorial pride (like most people these days). They are kin to the old Soho boho set of Francis Bacon and Jeffrey Bernard - louche, literary, unkempt and a bit crazy. Chris, the Black Gull owner, once suggested that I must be 'crazy', otherwise I wouldn't be working in the shop - ha-ha! I laughed, but after a few months there I'm starting to think he might be right.

Perhaps it's something to do with being surrounded by a lot of Wisdom in book-form yet confronted by stupid people on a daily basis. Every day someone wanders in, looks around and walks out as if completely nonplussed by what they're looking at. Oh well, a life of reading is not for everyone, eh? Just yesterday a woman who must have been at least 70 handed me two Kids books and asked me what age group they were suitable for. How the hell should I know?! Can't you work that out? I mean, you've lived long enough and presumably either met or actually had children! 

The funniest request also happened yesterday when a man leaned into the counter and asked for anything related to nuns.

   "My wife is mad about anything to do with nuns," he smiled.

   "No, sorry," I replied.

   "None?" He joked.

   "None."

   Ironically, I'd sold a copy of Aldous Huxley's The Devils of Loudun just half an hour earlier. What are the chances of that happening?

One way I keep myself entertained is playing music from Spotify on the phone linked to a small portable speaker. Yesterday I treated the public to The John Coltrane Quartet Plays, but as Coltrane got stuck into his solo on Brazilia I wondered if it wasn't...too much...for Them (those for whom His Majesty's sonic explorations in the name of improvisational self-expression are just a bloody racket). I mean, he's too much for me sometimes. Was he scrambling their brains, which needed to focus on reading and not be disrupted by sonic interference? Probably. Normally I play it safe, present favourites being the likes of Jelly Roll Morton and Sidney Bechet. No-one can object to early Jazz, except those that hate it. Coltrane's rampant progressive approach is, however, another matter, isn't it? Part of me was ready to stop the album after that track, whilst another part felt the urge to force Greatness upon the public and make 'em 'ave it! There! Take this! Cautious me won out, though. I moved on to Velvet Underground's third album and when the track Jesus played I thought of Sister Rosetta Tharpe's Gospel Train album, jumping in at the third track, Jesus Is Here Today. As LJ joked the other week when I said I played the best music of any book shop, I still can't help being a DJ, despite having been retired for several years. Three tracks later comes Up Above My Head I Hear Music In The Air, in which Sister sings 'Up above my head I see trouble in the air'. I couldn't help wondering if she too had a problem with starlings.

Tales from the Black Gull Bookshop - Know What I Mean?, Naked Lunch and All That Jazz

 

"A man of taste!" I told the young man who had just bought The Russian Experiment In Art (Thames and Hudson) whilst saying how much he liked the music I was playing (Cannonball Adderley's Blue Note classic, Know What I Mean?). There was me thinking LJ and I were the only people in the world to appreciate both. That's not true, of course, I know there must be others, but how often do you meet them, eh? 

Years ago, when I worried about such things, I'd sit moping in my room wondering where all the like-minded souls were, despite having met a few during various phases, such as the emergence of Jazz as a viable club soundtrack in 80s London...or drunken nights in Aylesbury's Green Man discussing fanzines to the sound of Punk. But most of my life has felt like a lonely one regarding finding fellow travellers. These days I care less. The internet may have created the potential for finding the types you wish to find, but guess what, they live on the other side of the world and just typing text as an act of mutual appreciation always feels empty compared to actual face-to-face encounters.

I've rarely complimented people on their taste in the shop, so far. Sometimes I've silently acknowledged to myself what a great choice they've made. Thursday provided two exceptions; first the young man mentioned above, second a girl who bought a copy of Burroughs' Naked Lunch and a picture-heavy book on Kandinsky - my kinda gal! I was even more pleased because I'd put the book out on the table that morning in a bid to force Art upon the masses. Surprise, surprise, putting books out does work, sometimes. I can put out what I think are the greatest books in the shop but you know, you can't make a horse drink. That said, displaying the Kandinsky book definitely sold it as opposed to leaving it on the shelves. 

She, like all of us, enjoyed being complimented. She thanked me very much, beaming a youthful smile. Not for the first time since we've had fresh copies of Naked Lunch in did I wonder if the buyer knew what they were letting themselves in for. After Joyce's Ulysses, it may be the second-ranked unread-must-have on the shelves of the world. The day before, two girls in their early twenties cooed upon discovering the Sex Drugs and Rock'n'Roll section, one remarking on all the Hunter S. Thompson books. I overheard the words 'Beat Generation' mentioned as they talked. One of them had a copy of Naked Lunch in her hands. I ventured to offer any help if they needed it regarding Beat literature, which sparked the taller one into rambling about being inspired by the film, Kill Your Darlings, which I haven't seen. She said she had Naked Lunch but hadn't read it. Somehow I doubt that she ever will. Something about them suggested to me that if any glamour exists in the allure of the Beats these two had managed to find it and that, rather than the literary merits or cultural significance, is what they were focused on. Good luck to them! I won't pretend there wasn't glamour in those adventures on the road and all that Jazz to me as a teenager.

Meanwhile, back in the shop, the Constructivist/Jazz-loving chap had a friend who came in earlier and bought Miles: The Autobiography (Picador). I only found out they were friends upon seeing them together outside afterwards. He asked me what I was playing (the Adderley album). "Nice", he replied when I told him. I also told him that the book he'd bought was good. Seeing them together I wondered "Who are these young freaks?" They weren't dressed stylishly. One had a lot of curly hair, which means he was quite possibly studying music (ha-ha). I pondered them for some time afterwards since trade quietened down. They were anomalies. They could have eclectic taste, by which I mean one foot in the contemporary/obligatory 'street' music scene and the other in the Cool World of the past. There's no movement afoot, that I know of, which involves youngsters discovering Jazz. Whatever, it was a pleasing conundrum. 

Black Gull Books, Camden Market

Paper collage: Break The Language Barrier / Weird Wayne Shorter and improvised Art

 

RTomens, 2021

Paper collage of words cut from an old newspaper. No, the old papers are not the source of the moths that also inhabit The Cave, honest, I tell LJ, because they're also eating her clothes - the bastards! Like a moth to a flame I can't keep away from words and letters. I'm still learning to read the signals buzzing around in my brain because like alien transmissions they need decoding - is anybody there? So I cut up words as if scrambling 'the message' will make things clearer. 

When told that Wayne Shorter sounds like scrambled eggs, Art Blakey replied "Yeah, but it's the way he scrambles 'em!" Wayne's playing was considered to be 'weird' by some, understandably, because if you listen to his 60s albums for Blue Note as leader and member of Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers there is something very 'weird' about his playing. Not weird as in 'Free', although he obviously felt free enough to test the boundaries; but weird choice in ways to go, or ways to begin a solo as on this classic, Afrique...

...Afreek! Wayne, what the hell are you doing starting right down there?! 

When I come over all pretentious I tell anyone who asks (one or two have) regarding my methodology in making art that it's comparable to a Jazz solo - I told you it was pretentious. But, yes, a lot of us artists improvise, of course. Another song springs to mind, the one that asks 'Do you know, where you're going to?' - the answer is always no. To continue the Jazz solo analogy, if I may and you can't stop me, I'm definitely more akin to soloists in the first 50 years than the long-players of the second half. I usually work quickly and like some of the best players, get in, get the job done and get out, not before I bore the non-existent audience, but before I bore myself. 

With that in mind, I'm off now to finish a collage.

TTFN

Living City Survival Kit (Archigram) / London cool / Man In The City (colllage) /Ornette Coleman

Looking through a book on  Art in the Sixties I saw this again. Not this exact picture, but a version of it. This, culled from online, looks like it might be the original, though. Seems it was created by Warren Chalk as part of the Living City exhibition held at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, in 1963. Every time I come across it I think 'Yes!', so right. Cigarettes, Playboy, whisky, shades and two Jazz albums. It pretty much sums up the birth of the Cool in London. OK, whether Chalk thought he was laying out all that was Cool, I don't know. Pop Art? Definitely. No ordinary Map of Cool would include sweets and a packet of Daz. A design for living. What could be better than sipping a whisky, smoking and listening to Ornette Coleman whilst flicking through the latest Playboy? Eh? The fact that Coleman features instead of, say, the Modern Jazz Quartet or Miles Davis proves Chalk was thinking outside instead of opting for the obvious. It's 'cool' beyond conventional cool into the realms of the avant-garde where those who knew 'got' it.  

As much as I love it, I hate it. I'm envious! Pathetic, I know. To be 18 in London in '63....the clothes, music, Art - yeah, yeah, we all know. You could smoke in bars! You could...you could...ah, forget it.

Some kids would envy me being 18 when Punk happened and 15 when Funk was at it's peak. You never know you're living through what will be someone else's dream era. As good as Punk was, unlike the early-60s, it was also about nihilism, destruction, anger, frustration etc. I'd rather have been part of something far more positive, an era when the working classes were breaking into all the arts and employment figures were high.

Just to link the city theme, here's one I made a few years ago.

RTomens, 2018

Charcoal drawing/print: Er / Dream with a dream / Rick Stein & Sam Fuller's animals in my dream.

RTomens, 2021

 

A dream within a dream? Last night I dreamt I wanted to tell someone about a dream I had. The weird thing is that the dream was real; it was the dream I'd just had. How about that? What would Freud say? Also, talking of dreams, I have the chef, Rick Stein and filmmaker Sam Fuller to thanks for the animals in my dream the previous night. Whilst showing someone a pub that meant a lot to me we had to pass by a farm and in the yard was a small wooden cage containing a fish with two heads. That evening I'd watched Rick Stein preparing a fish. Later that night we watched Sam Fuller's Forty Guns, in which there are chickens strutting around in the street. Chickens naturally showed up in the farm yard of my dream, but whether they would have been there anyway is another matter. can you dream of a farm yard that doesn't have chickens in it? I think I need to know.

I also need to know how to increase traffic to this blog - apparently. That's the kind of thing a blogger is supposed to know. One commentator regarding artist's blog said 'don't deviate and talk about the weather etc' - dammit! I'm always deviating. Deviation from Art is my speciality. 

To make amends, I'd better talk about Art. My art or someone else's. 

Art.

Charcoal art.

Outsider art?

Have I mentioned art enough? 

As you can see, I've been at the charcoal again. That makes it sound as if I eat the stuff. Not recommended. Once again, I worked over a self-made image, this time a photomontage of old cut-up text including a photograph.

I never dream of being popular. I'm not the type of artist that is, or ever could be. When I see what popular art bloggers (assuming they still exist) create, I know I'm a million miles away. Never mind! Thank you (yes, you) for dropping in.

TTFN

Here's Charles Mingus...talking about Freud (not not him, me)

Drawing/Print: Grimaces / Street Life in Kentish Town /Blue Train - Coltrane

RTomens

 

I drew, I printed...I grimaced...there's a lot to grimace about these days. Still, count your blessings...you're alive. 

Tiers for fears.

A magpie alights on the chimneys of the roof opposite...I watch it strut over them...without a care in the world...other than where the next meal's coming from.

A reason to be cheerful: Bean About Town (Kentish Town) is still serving great coffee during lockdown. More to the point, situated as it is under the canopy (just North of the station) there are fixed seats in close proximity. The general public do hang out there but it's also a favourite place of...what should I call them? Street people? I often see the same chap there that I've been accidentally meeting in Kentish Town for a few years now. He's not full-on 'street' but seems to know loads who are. He's on social security. One of his associates was there the other day. She asked me if I could spare her some change but now, as opposed to before, I can honestly say that I'm also unemployed. I chat about Art and politics with this guy. It's a street relationship, neither of us being inclined to invite the other into our homes. 

I'm 'keeping it real', as LJ and I often joke to each other whilst mingling with the filthy proletariat. Joking aside, street people aren't like everyone else. For all their dreams and occasional aspirations they remain on the margins and won't ever bore you with what happened to them at work. They don't work. Not working today is becoming more common. Some who work now may well find themselves 'on the street'. No laughing matter. If street people have a 'warped' perspective on life, it strikes me that the more lockdown insanity continues, the more people will also look at life through a warped lens. It's enough to warp even the clearest of minds. Trusted stable factors such as jobs (relatively), community, pubs, shops are all being warped beyond recognition, either through nonsensical anti-virus rules, or simple disappearance. 

Still, the coffee served from this wagon is top quality. I hoped to win a free one the other day. Jazz was being played quietly and a woman in her 70s was leaning over the counter as if listening. I asked her if she was trying to recognise the track. She mumbled something about 'Paul somebody'. Then it changed and the girl turned it up a little, realising we were discussing the music. 'Oh, now, you know this one!' I said with a smile. Perhaps that was a little cruel, I thought, as she leant over again, looking nonplussed. The girl serving challenged me to name it. 'Blue Train, John Coltrane'. She checked the player for the title and was duly impressed. I asked if I'd won a coffee. No, I hadn't. No matter, a great coffee and a snippet of Blue Train was good enough.

collage, print, drawing, Coltrane

With Delores Purdy and Leopold Bloom in the graveyard / Strange Fruit

 

The very night we watched the second part of In The Heat Of The Night, not having done so for years (as magnificent as every performance is, Rod Steiger's is still my favourite), once in bed, I turn to James Joyce's Ulysses, which I am reading in parts, between novels which I can finish in totality. Being between books, I picked up with Joyce again. Well, damned if it isn't the part where Leopold Bloom is attending a funeral. As I'm sure you know, Delores Purdy's memorable dialogue is about how the cop, Sam Wood, seduced her with a promise of pleasure in the graveyard on the cool slabs. For Bloom, there is no such pleasure, naturally, and Joyce ponders burial in his own inimitable style:

'I daresay the soil would be quite fat with corpse manure, bones, flesh,

nails, charnelhouses. Dreadful. Turning green and pink, decomposing.

Rot quick in damp earth. The lean old ones tougher.'

Whilst In The Heat Of The Night has entered Hollywood film lore as a classic depiction of racism in America, on the same subject, a 'pop' example of creating poetry from death, which matches Joyce in terms of power, is Abel Meeropol's Strange Fruit.

'Southern trees bear a strange fruit

Blood on the leaves and blood at the root

Black bodies swingin' in the Southern breeze

Strange fruit hangin' from the poplar trees

Pastoral scene of the gallant South

The bulgin' eyes and the twisted mouth

Scent of magnolias sweet and fresh

Then the sudden smell of burnin' flesh

Here is a fruit for the crows to pluck

For the rain to gather

For the wind to suck

For the sun to rot

For the tree to drop

Here is a strange and bitter crop.'

Most famously sung by Billie Holiday...

Three geometric drawings: Untitled / The Lounge Lizards

Three drawings from the last couple of days. Are they...imprecise? You could say that. But when I draw I'm less concerned about precision than achieving satisfying results which, as you may have guessed, do not require precision.

Looking at Kazimir Malevich's paintings a few year back at the Tate Modern exhibition, what struck me was the imprecision of some. Small marks, slightly 'off'' joins, perhaps...all signalled the human hand at work. These days, it would be easy to create 'perfect' lines via the computer and, I confess, I have done so. But the results are far less pleasing than those from drawing by hand. 

Back in the early-80s The Lounge Lizards were dubbed, or called themselves (I don't remember), 'Fake Jazz'. Perfect. Their very 'inauthenticity' rendered their music a sublime reimagining of Jazz, rewritten as an edgy, No Wave New York assimilation. You may call these Fake Constructivist/Suprematist drawings. Feel free.

 

Daring To Dream - Anthony Braxton: Sound Collage Artist / It Don't Mean A Thing If It Ain't Got That Swing? / Vispo

Anthony Braxton and cybernetic Jazz...no, he is not a Jazz man-machine yet I'm told and have believed for years of not listening to Braxton that he is a 'logical' composer but what, exactly, the logic is to his compositions remains a mystery to me, you (probably) and all but Physics Professors Jazz Club, of which there may even be one member.

Meanwhile, my CD collection gathers even more dust than it did before I turned to Spotify (free 3 month trial) for my musical fix. And whilst staring at the green symbol on the screen this morning I wondered who to explore. Don't ask why but 'Anthony Braxton' sprang to mind. If I have to find some logic to that choice it would look something like Abstract Jazz > Art accompaniment > Interesting-but-not-distracting > = Anthony Braxton but why him of all the abstract Jazz musicians, I don't know. Let's just say he's resided in the back of my mind (way back, barely visible, but there) for years.

What's in the front of Anthony Braxton's mind? He's 75 now. Does he contemplate death despite have immortalised himself via recordings? Does he still smoke a pipe as pictured on the album cover to New York/Fall 1974? I like to think he did whilst he was Professor of Music at Wesleyan University until retirement in 2013. It would be entirely in keeping with my image (old) of a professor. He doesn't seem to be thinking of retiring from music having made an album last year (Quartet (New Haven) ).

Is it Jazz? Really? Should the question even be asked? Probably not. Jazz instrumentation aside, because he's black, it may even be racist to automatically label his music 'Jazz'. But then we enter a tricky domain of defining Jazz. Wynton Marsalis thought Braxton's music was not Jazz. But then we know about Wynton's beef with the avant-garde, don't we? To him, it really don't mean a (Jazz) thing if it ain't got that swing.

I read that he conducted 'experiments in collage forms' which involved quartets performing different compositions simultaneously. Hmmm...that's interesting. I must find those, if I can work out where they are and if I'm actually listening to them or 'just' Free Jazz. Not that Braxton ever, as far as I know, engaged in 'Free' music. Collaged music is fitting for someone who makes 'art music'. Music, that is, which eschews traditional elements in favour of...what? Texture, tones, patterns? As befits a former professor, Braxton is fond of diagrams and graphic scores. I came across this one from 2004 and it's similarity to asemic writing was striking....

The idea of there being a 'cold' logic to Braxton's music is, in itself, problematic. As if, dare I say, all black composers should 'swing'. Damn, I find myself returning to notions of what Jazz should be in relation to race. Move on...

Braxton's 'logic', his 'art', seems to feature strict compositional forms in which players can, indeed, express themselves freely. One might say that's been the basis of Jazz since year zero if 'logic' and 'composition' are substituted with tune and melody. Like modern Classical music since Schoenberg (?) and the subsequent anti-Romantic modernists, Braxton's sounds demand only for us to open our ears and shove preconceptions aside; banish the baggage of what music is supposed to sound like. It's no coincidence that the approach which requires abandoning ideas of what Art should look like in order to appreciate Abstraction is needed for Braxton's music.

Art and music are constant bedfellows in my world. They frequently happen simultaneously. Like Braxton, I may be, in some sense, an 'outsider' as far as the mainstream goes, although to voluntarily position oneself is not advisable! After all, it's easy to claim Outsider status simply because Art is not a career. I don't make Conceptual art yet I'm fully aware of how 'difficult' it may be for some to 'understand' what I do sometimes. Well, as Miles Davis said, if you understood everything I said, you'd be me. Unlike Braxton, though, I cannot apply intellectual rigour to my 'compositions'...and I will never be a professor. Still, I find a strange, unfathomable kinship with the like of Braxton, Cecil Taylor and, yes, Miles Davis. It's purely imagined, of course. But please allow me to indulge in a fantastical relationship between my visual creations and their sonic ones. It may be beyond belief, but then so too is much of the music made by those who dare to dream.

Untitled, RTomens 2020