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

RTomens, 2024

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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! 

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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.

Music: Friendly Electrons by WOLFGANG SEIDEL / Vispo: You Tried / Photos: Canary Wharf

 

Wolfgang Seidel's Friendly Electrons offers positively charged subatomic sound particles not bound to any particular genre but instead alighting on 'free' Jazz, Modern Classical and Electronic Abstraction. My favourite recent album. There are rarely any that impress me so much. Friendly? Yes. Feel the warmth and clarity! 

Wolfgang Seidel doesn't have a Wiki page but the Rock band he was in does.

Seidel plays everything, proving his chops on Try Harder. Not in a showy fashion, but integrating vibes, drums and piano brilliantly. The following Film Noir eschews the obvious Jazzy big band film noir soundtrack formula in favour of tightly arranged strings resulting in dark tension. Mostly electronic, always excellent and highly recommended.

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RTomens, 2024

Made a few days ago. It began with the phrase, then the typing of the 'Y' leading to the phrase before continuing on down and out of sight, just because that's where it wanted to go. 'Y' made its final appearance as a packed cluster at various angles because it wanted to fill out the bottom section.  

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RTomens, 2024

Emblematic of big business, Canary Wharf may represent a hellish manifestation of corporate greed...or...seen another way, as I did recently, a daunting, magnificent architectural spectacle...on a purely visual level; partly futuristic but with remnants of industry Past remaining in the form of cranes (?) like these...

RTomens, 2024

Since what were the docks for anyway but commercial enterprise? Still, the old machinery used then for the practical purpose of shifting goods, as opposed to today's button-pushing wealth creation, looks fantastic. Parts such as this, found at one end of the South Dock...

RTomens, 2024

RTomens, 2024

Walking between the buildings a few weeks earlier, it seemed as if the whole idea had been abandoned. Post-lockdown, fewer faces sat at screens in all those offices, presumably. One day, I imagined, it could be a Ballardian landscape of totally empty offices, cracked facades, broken windows and weeds having found their way through the cracks in the pavements to bloom everywhere. 

TTFN

Stranger In A Strange Land / Vispo: TDS

 

Yes, as L.P. Hartley said, 'the past is a foreign country'...and you are a stranger in a strange land there. So there I am circa 1987 in my first London digs which I'd been in for about a year, thinking to myself 'The streets aren't paved with gold!' An Ornette Coleman album in the alcove, ready to impress all the hip young chicks I would lure into my den - ha-ha!

Who was I? 

A younger person, before the wrinkles and blemishes grew; before grey hair replaced the brown. A painter, no less! But before the internet there was no-one to see my work, except friends and...those chicks (I probably hid the paintings away rather than proudly displayed them...or at least, I should have done if I wanted any 'success'!).

No emails. A communal phone on the wall outside on the landing above the stairs. A communal kitchen across the hall and a bath further down, shared by girls working, like me, for the NHS. I welcomed and pushed patients in wheelchairs around the hospital by day and went to Jazz clubs and gigs at night.

What I imagined was in my future I have no idea. What I could not have imagined, despite using a typewriter for letters and poems, is that decades on a typewriter would become my most-used tool for art. Here's my latest. Title: TDS

RTomens, 2024

Photo: Shoes in Kentish Town

 

RTomens, 2024

A singular shoe, often hanging from a wire overhead, is not an unusual sight in London. That in itself is an odd phenomenon. This morning, however, I came across this pair, neatly placed as photographed. It's as if the invisible/man/woman was waiting to cross the road. Shoes in search of feet to fill them? They had been placed, rather than simply thrown down. A prank by someone? An Art statement? Who knows...

In Nomansland

 

Perhaps you've been in Nomansland, figuratively speaking. Looking at my current situation (unemployed) negatively, I could say I'm there now. But then, does that mean that being employed is the only positive place to be; a 'real', solid, acceptable, viable 'place' in society? Since we tend to gauge our place in society so simplistically it's tempting to say I'm in Nomansland. 

Wait though, I refuse to be put there! Whilst it's fair to say that not being employed mostly does a person no good, should anyone find themselves in that state and somehow survive in good mental (if not financial) health, then surely that's a good thing. Work for most people is that time-consuming chore that's necessary to survive, materially. 

I have a dull work record, from one dead-end job to another, broken by spells of unemployment. I coulda been somebody, you know! Alas, poor me. The somebody I am had to be fashioned from bitter experience, some lucky breaks and most of all the creative drive that gives me pleasure. 

Work (paid) may be gone forever, but at least I now have time to visit places outside of the overcrowded city; places like Nomansland. The route there was by country lanes, trees lit by a mostly muted, low winter sun, all the more glorious for that...

Nomansland itself is a huge common named, presumably, because no man could own it and hurrah for that. Thank god there are acres in the countryside that cannot be claimed by anyone, either a farmer or a greedy speculator. 

Book: Reshaping The Invisible (1963) / Collage: Liberation Through Chemicals

 

Charity shop find yesterday. It was priced at five pounds but some pages are about to fall out so I asked if five pounds was the pages-falling-out price or the we-hadn't-noticed-the-loose-pages price. Deciding it was the latter, he took a quid off. Imagine (can you?) how thrilled I was to open this very plain, anonymous-looking book to find it filled with fantastic full-bleed colour (Agfacolor) images. It was produced to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the pharmaceutical and biotechnology company, Bayer, who, funnily enough, trademarked and marketed Heroin from 1898 to 1910. It's funny because the title of the opening essay is: 'Liberation Through Chemical Research'. I don't think heroin ever liberated anyone.

So I was/am torn (not pun intended since I use scissors mostly but do tear sometimes) between using the pages for collage or keeping them untouched. This afternoon I went the third way by altering scanned images from the book on the computer, plus one from a film annual. Here's the result.

RTomens, 2024

As I was saying to a friend the other day, I prefer paper collage to digital (you noticed?). I like it for the reasons usually stated; the feel, the rawness, the handmade look. Yes, I know software can recreate all those things but I've never felt inclined to learn a program that will do it. Plus, I confess, that when I see a very good collage that imitates handmade but then see that it's 'digital' I say 'Pah - cheat!' to myself.

See yah.

Street photos

 

Print/paper collage: New (and the making of it)

 

RTomens, 2023

Inspired by flicking through a book about Jacques Villeglé I made the piece above this afternoon. I can't pretend to be in the same league as either him or Mimmo Rotella, but it kept me occupied. 

Talking of Rotella, whilst in Cockfosters earlier this week we came across this...

,,,amazing, eh? It could have been a roadside exhibition of Rotella's work...almost.

To my delight there was further decollage nearby, from which I got this photo...

...the application of which to my torn collage gave me this...

So now you know.

Foto / Non-readers

So the man outside the shop nods towards the vacant shop over the road and says an artist he knows wanted to buy it as a studio but it costs too much - well whadda surprise! I tell him my room is my studio because I'm an amateur who works small and besides doesn't have room to store paintings, well JP's paintings are already slid into a compartment (shelf) we suspended on the skirting boards of a cupboard and the living room door and if we store them near the window (where they used to be) they get mould growing on them because we live in a damp, semi-basement cave and the paint on the walls in my room near the window is peeling away, which is funny because I tried painting on some printing paper yesterday and having rolled it a few times the surface of that paper started coming away exposing the second white layer, which looked crap and couldn't be remedied to my satisfaction.

A man comes in the shop and asks if he we sell street maps, like the old A to Z books we all used before smart phones - what are we, a fucking post office?! Look around you'll see clues everyhwere - we're a bookshop! Ha-ha-ha.

People come in for cards. We do sell a few. One wanted a birthday card - what are we, a fucking card shop? Ha-ha-ha.

Some come in and only buy cards. What's wrong with them? Don't they read? Well, surprise, surprise, not everyone does.

So I stand outside having a fag watching all the people walk past thinking 'Don't they like books?' How can anyone walk past a secondhand bookshop? But they do. Most of them do. Most of them have more important things to do than browse a selection of Art, Photography, Philosophy, Fiction and History. So I smoke some more and wonder what can be more important than that. I can't think of anything. Then I get cynical and start cursing them all (not out loud) for being useless blobs with nothing more interesting to occupy their minds aside from child care, shopping for food, watching Netflix...or...or...what? I don't know what people do or think about most of the time. people are a mystery. I look in their windows walking down the street and wonder what their lives are about, really, what does everyone do? They watch Netflix. They watch sport. They watch films featuring superheroes smashing up evil enemies - or something. They don't make Art. I don't blame them. It's either in you or it ain't. It's not a lofty pursuit. It's nothing at all to most people.

This week-end I console myself with the knowledge that Chelsea cannot lose. They're not playing. 

Artwork: My Life Of Thrills / Vispo and The Working Man / Artwork by Jane Pearrett

 

RTomens, 2022

It's multi-media - I'm multi-media: TV, video, computer - ain't we all? 

Talking of a thrilling life, our Wenzels loyalty card was fully stamped so the loaf was free. 

Vispo and The Working Man: I'm in the garden typing this morning whilst a workman is up on the roof fixing the leaky gutter. He rings the bell afterwards and shows us the repairs he's done. Then he asks me what I was doing on the typewriter. 

'It's called visual poetry,' I say. 

'That's cool. I saw you turning the paper 'round.' He smiles. 'I've never seen a typewriter being used before.'

So you see, you snobs, the Common Man is capable of appreciating one of the most obscure branches of 'the arts' (is it even a branch at all? More like a twig). LJ reckoned it's because he didn't carry any cultural baggage (just a tool box). I think she's right. But that can swing both ways...wide open to anything...or door firmly shut on any art that 'doesn't look like art'. That's not only a problem with the Common Man. I know a few folk who think they're 'cultured' but their respect is reserved for purely formal art. This may (in some cases) be because they have an automatic distaste for anything artistically 'radical' because radicalism in art so often came/comes from the politically infantile utopian dreamers; types who fantasise about 'revolution' without having given any serious thought to the consequences.

All I posted was this...

Yes, it could upset someone. Anything could upset someone. 

Hmm..this modern art thing...

...what's it all abaht?...

...I'll drink some more coffee and think it over

Artworks by Jane Pearrett

Photos: Wrecked Boats On The Thames

RTomens, 2022

We walked West from Chiswick Bridge. The tide was out, leaving wrecked boats high and dry amid the exposed rubbish and fragments of less sturdy, abandoned vessels. Yet across the river, the lush flora was bursting with life, as if to mocks man's efforts to build anything permanent. For a moment, it struck me as very Ballardian and I half-expected the few remaining people to sail past in a boat, looking for refuge in a drowned world. 

RTomens, 2022

RTomens, 2022

 

Another day in the office / Print: Shoes Zone

 

Another day in the 'office'.

RTomens, 2022

Shoe Zone is a cheap shoe shop in the UK. It's also a scenario in an alternate universe in which ever-present Observers analyse the consumer habits of a population who have no idea they are being watched but whose behaviour is manipulated according to their desires, not their needs, as depicted above.

Two deaf guys & John Cage's silence / Under heavy manners: Rockers vs Punks on the dancefloor

 

Two deaf guys turn up at the bus stop. So? I'm watching them sign to each other when I realise I'm wearing a badge by Mark Pawson, part of his John Cage series...

I watch them in their silent world, wondering if they too would like to wear the badge. Wouldn't that be a positive statement? After all, a lot of...um...(tries to think of PC term...) 'large' people celebrate their size as a good thing, don't they? If you played the deaf guys Cage's 4′33″  would it be the only piece of 'music' they could 'hear' as we do? Technically, no, because the background noise is supposed to be part of the piece (coughing, shuffling, whatever). But has it ever been recorded in a studio? Not as far as I know. 

I can't imagine life without music, my current passion being Rockabilly. Such as this...

Listening to some the other day I was reminded of the time we were appointed guardians of our DJ friend's equipment at a disco as things got heavy between the Rockers and Punks. Well, it was 1978 and we were all 'under heavy manners', you know. So we stood in front of the stage, I was by one set of speakers, when, having played an Elvis tune, he said "The best thing about that is the crackles at the end" - yes, he really did say that, but instead of trying to tear him to pieces the Rockers and Punks went at each other. It was quite a scrap. No-one tried to break it up because at village discos the 'security' was usually a local farmer who had no intention of getting thumped. We escaped unscathed, as did our friend's equipment. I imagine if he had played a 'live' recording of 4'33" there would have been a riot.

Kings Rd, 1977

Modernist architectural wreck

 

Came across this building whilst out for a stroll the other day. It stumped us. A modernist ruin? It looked too 'young' to be abandoned already. Neither of us could work out its age. Late-60s? Early-70s? I doubted it was even a house at first, such was its condition. It's to the side of a drive leading to a tower block so we thought it might have once been inhabited by the caretaker. Whatever, it's tragic modernist-dream-ruined state is, to me, mysterious. London's filled with great modernist houses, of course, but this is the first in 'ruin' that we've seen.

Mental As Anything / Remembrance of Things Past

 

RTomens, 2019

Hello! Good to see you again! How are you? 

Last night I dreamt about an ex-girlfriend (1979-82) all because I'd played Elvis Costello that afternoon and she was a big fan of his. She was quite the literary girl, you know, hence the Attraction(s) of Costello's lyrical skills. She read Andre Gide and quoted him in letters to me. She loved Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir. In fact, at one point I think she even convinced herself that we were the contemporary equivalent - ha-ha! - despite her writing nothing and me just being a poet who'd made a few fanzines. Well, we can all indulge in fantasies, can't we? I probably played along, although such lofty aspirations were never openly stated.

Recently I lie in bed at night (or morning) getting all nostalgic...memories of specific people pour into the frontal awareness zone of my noodle from way back in the seemingly infinite box of marked 'biography'. Um, does that make sense? No matter. Thinking of this former girlfriend I recalled that we'd meet in the Wimpy Bar at Piccadilly Circus every Saturday morning. This was before I lived in London. How romantic, eh? I can't recall what we drank but I can still see us sat at a table window looking down on the people and traffic. I think we looked down on a lot of people. 

What made us so special? Absolutely nothing, but sometimes the armour of self-belief comes in handy. I needed it, especially since I worked in a factory. Trouble is, the armour wasn't wearable when I spent all day concocting what would become frozen food dishes. I was too weak to even lift it, metaphorically-speaking. But come the week-end, I was off to London! I wore what I thought was the hippest clothes. We went to see the hippest bands! We danced in clubs! We listened to Art Blakey LPs on her stereo. 

Three years later I was secretly seeing someone else. And so was she. Huh. That's life (and love). It didn't end well, as you can imagine. I burnt all her letters and rarely saw her again. She moved to Paris (typical!). She became a lesbian, which I tell myself was because after me she could never hope to find a better male lover....ha-ha-ha!

Today I listened to a lot of Kraftwerk, but never having dated a girl who was into them, I can't dream about one.

TTFN

Virus - Mimmo Rotella (1989) / The Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Nice

Flicking through this book of Mimmo Rotella's work the other day I came across Virus. Seems apt to post it.

Then I remembered seeing some of his work in Nice and found this photo of me in the The Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, one of my all-time favourite galleries, not just because it contains some great work but also, you know, it's surrounded by one of the greatest cities in Europe. I looked at a few other photos from our holiday...but was overcome by melancholia at the thought of holidays in the South of France in a time before we could even imagine the tragedy of the Chinese virus...and the thought of possibly never returning because, basically, we ain't got a job between us - bah!

Photographing detritus on the street.

RTomens, 2021

 

The cop asks me "Are you all right, sir?"

"Yeah, just taking some photos."

I'd arrived at the transport police building where cops were sat in a van outside. The cop that asked me was heading for the van. If the cops in the van had been watching, which some of them probably were, they'd have seen a bloke aiming his tablet at the ground quite often as he walked along the street. Suspicious behaviour? Hardly.

I know people look at me funny when I'm taking photos. I can sense it, the question in their heads: 'What is he photographing?'  If I'd shown the cop the photos I'd taken he might have thought me...mad? But not suspect. 

I love the details in 'rubbish' on the streets, walls, lamp posts and phone boxes. They only become apparent when seen close-up through the lens. Here's one I took in December of last year.

RTomens, 2020

What was once carefully thought out design is rendered abstract by time and the elements. I'm thrilled if text is involved, even a few letters. That 'pie' emerges in the photo above makes me chuckle. I'm guessing it's 'piece' cut short. Detritus in the streets...I wonder if I dare suggest that it somehow symbolises our wasted society....decay, abandonment...perhaps that's going too far.