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...
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.
Size isn't everything, as the actress said to the bishop, but this morning I was thinking about A4 compared to A5-sized paper and how much I'm enjoying the latter whereas I used to mostly use A4. The smaller space seems to focus the mind, you know, the way you really have to look at that spot on your face but that bruise requires little examination - like that.
Hemmingway said if you include a gun on the wall in your short story, make sure someone uses it. Wise old bird, wasn't he? Well, he didn't get to be so old because he did use a gun...so...anyway, the wisdom may be applied to a small canvas on which each mark means more.
The smaller the 'canvas', the more intimate it feels to both the creator and the viewer. Obvious. Isn't it? If you share work online, viewers can appreciate the detail more easily. That's it, spread those fingers, zoom in a...look at that!
After a few months of frequent A5 usage, A4 feels massive - all that space to cover! Us typists work with such small marks, unlike the Abstract Expressionists dragging large brushes over a canvas we tick-tack away creating letters and symbols. There's always minimalism, of course, but I've never been drawn to it. Perhaps if I used posh A3 paper and typed only one or two marks it might look more like art and I could sell my work to galleries and...etc...
Just About lay abandoned until, stuck over another piece which included ink pen drawing, I turned the pens to it and laid on the red as a fix it or fuck-it-up measure. OK, that wasn't bad - livened it up anyway. Then black outlining the shapes within the overall structure. Yes, that's better. Finally, fill in some parts totally and type over the red, which had virtually obscured the type underneath. At last I thought it was presentable.
The title is stolen from Michael Moorcock, as I'm sure you know. The dancer in my piece is Fred Astaire, minus his cane because that would have proved impossible to cut out. A few hours after making this piece I picked up a copy of Hard Core Horror (No.2) just for a flick through, and where should I land but on a page featuring Fred Astaire.
You may be wondering what the hell Fred is doing in a comic strip with a title like that and I would explain but life really is too short so I suggest you buy the Hard Core series, then everything else published by Savoy. That should keep you occupied for most of the year.
Alain Resnais' Last Year in Marienbad is an exquisite film, isn't it? Dreamlike. Yes...but I think I'll be watching Predator next - ha-ha. Starship Troopers seems to have set me on the trashy monster movie path. But is it trashy? Perhaps. It's a no-brainer! Alien, on the other hand, is almost 'art'. It creates tension, a claustrophobic atmosphere on the brilliantly designed Nostromo....etc...you know all about it.
Fear of The Alien was palpable in the cinema, as I recall. The only scary monster that had a similar effect in my cinematic experience was Dennis Hopper's Frank in Blue Velvet. I'm not one for Horror films, generally. It's not my favourite genre. That said, The Haunting (1963) and The Shining are two of my very favourite films. Truth is I'm a lightweight who scares easily and hates the site of onscreen buckets of blood. I have an overactive imagination, perhaps. As a kid, native Americans whooping around a campfire in an old Hollywood film would have me terrified in bed at night, thinking they might come creeping into my bedroom for my young scalp. I should take the British Murder Boys advice...
Here's a postcard I made and sold whilst working in the bookshop. Science fiction is a frequent source of inspiration to both my collages and visual poetry. That's obvious in the collages, but not always so in many vispo pieces where I've used texts from sci-fi stories which don't necessarily shout 'sci-fi', although sometimes they do. I think I may be the first space age visual poet. In July of last year I printed a booklet called Back To Earth, my only full project that's totally sci-fi influenced.
Now I have a confession: I'm watching Starship Troopers...again. I love it! Yes, I can see why some think it's rubbish. I can't see why it gets called 'fascist' - or maybe I can because, as you know, virtually anything that isn't promoting 'progressive' values gets called fascist.
It is, in part, a revolting spectacle. Casper Van Dien and Denise Richards as the lead characters in the romance are all dazzling teeth and perfect skin, like somebody's idea of 'perfect' androids. You could say the acting is android-like too, but the script doesn't exactly demand 'the method'. I think they're perfect. They are all-American model material. That's the point. You don't get the point? It's satire. This film sets up 'the dream' (military) only to have it destroyed in the expert blood-soaked hands of director, Paul Verhoeven, who knows how to do violence. Decapitation, limbs torn off, bodies sliced in two and pierced by bug pincers; he doesn't hold back. Anyone who thinks this film glorifies the military hasn't actually seen it.
Renowned critic Roger Ebert called it 'totalitarian'. He also said: 'What’s lacking is exhilaration and sheer entertainment. Unlike the “Star Wars” movies, which embraced a joyous vision and great comic invention, “Starship Troopers” doesn’t resonate.' Pah! What a wuss! He was missing the point entirely. Every shallow gesture towards emotional resonance is just that in Starship Troopers. It's a B-movie par excellence, wasting little time dwelling on 'likeable' characters, or even characterisation. Humans here have one job: kill bugs. This film is total entertainment!
Yes, it's vey easy to get the wrong idea, which is different from having a wrong idea, isn't it? Or is it? You can have wrong ideas about what colour scheme to choose when the room needs a fresh paint job. You can have a wrong idea then of standing on an unstable object to reach the top of the wall with the paint brush, resulting in physical harm. DIY is a wrong idea full stop to me. As LJ often reminds me, left to my own devices, I would be inhabiting a place of peeling wallpaper, cracked paint and threadbare carpets.
Remaining silent on controversial subjects is, on the whole, a good idea, I think. That (un)said, if everyone did that we would never read an opinion. But perhaps that would be good. The internet being clogged up with chatter and megaphone declarations regarding politics, it's easy to find yourself swimming in a sewer of toxicity and, as you know with swimming, opening your gob at the wrong time can be most unpleasant.
In an age when activism is encouraged, I suggest inactivism as a beneficial alternative. That's right, sit down and shut up. Make yourself a hot drink, read a book. The world will continue to spin without you getting hot under the collar and spouting off. It will continue to be in flux, just as nature creates earthquakes, floods etc. Of course there are causes worth getting active about. Take cereal box packaging. have you experienced the weakening of the cardboard used? HAVE YOU?!!! Does it not infuriate you, first when you try to open the new box cleanly, only to find it tearing, then close it using the supposedly handy slit, only to find it impossible due to the flimsy cardboard? If that's not worth protesting about, I don't know what is.
Such flimsy products will not survive the apocalypse, but what will? Here's a 1962 film made for the BBC's Monitor series, directed by Ken Russell, script by archaeologist, Jacquetta Hawkes. An 'infection' seems to have killed off most of humanity, which reminds me that I saw two women wearing masks in a cafe yesterday, happily talking through them over their open laptops, as if mask-wearing was the most natural thing in the world. The fact that they were American may or may not be relevant. Perhaps, when not relaxing in a cafe, they were out on the street with other mask-wearers, being activists about something. Perhaps they had see The Lonely Shore and it panicked them into wearing masks...
The film raises the question: how are 'we', in the present tense of the commentator, living to be so dismissive of those 'first world' worshippers of indestructible goods? Post-catastrophe, are we devoid of materialism? Apparently people had 'too much ownership' and people now 'would not wish for such a burden'. Aside from the everyday objects, some vases on the shore are deemed so 'delightful in shape and colour' that they could not have been made by the British, but rather by 'invaders' or 'refugees'. Oh, a nice level of irony there. In fact, the whole film treads a thin line between condemnation of the modern world and celebration of it's oddities.
Considering that Hawkes was one of the co-founders of CND a few years earlier, it's likely that her fears of impending doom for the planet informed this post-apocalyptic vision. Her Left-leaning (?) politics may also have fed into the notion that material goods were somehow corrupting, rather than beneficial.
As if to steal from Pop Art and in particular Richard Hamilton, you'll note that it's an American car on the beach. Russell made the famous film, Pop Goes The Easel, also for Monitor, in the same year. I wondered that scene reminded me of and then remembered Hamilton's cover, created a year later for Living Arts magazine.
Well, here's the film, be it a critique of consumerism or just a good sci-fi short.
Everything was better in the old days...(he says, only half-joking), even police cars. Look at this little beauty, parked outside a dealership in Golders Green. It's so...modest...you can't imagine it being used to chase villains but instead, simply pulled over to the roadside so that the copper could get out and ask old Hamish, who had been seen riding unsteadily, if he was OK. It turns out he's just had a few drinks at the The Clachaig Inn.
We had just disembarked from a hail and ride bus coming back from Hampstead Garden Suburb. Yes, when in the Suburb, you can actually hail the bus! Unbelievable, right? In London anyway. I'd never seen such a thing. What a novelty. Being knackered and old, we were damned glad of that service, having already wound our way up the hill from Golders Green to the Suburb. Thought we have a look, see what it's about. The highlight was Sir Edwin Lutyens' Central Square, flanked either side by St Jude's (below) and the Free Church (next down), both designed by Lutyens.
There's nothing fancy about the Central Square, but the simplicity and arrangement of the trees make it a great breathing space, elevated as it is on a hill from which little of the city below can be seen, except from certain vantage points; it feels like another world, impervious to the noise and traffic below.
Now I'd like to demonstrate to you how adventurous I can be. My life is full of such exploits, I assure you. I haven't rested on my laurels since retiring from Work, oh no.
Our return journey from Golders Green involves a bus change at Archway. You couldn't get a much greater contrast than Archway and Hampstead Garden Suburb. One is posh, quiet and civilised, the other is...Archway. Anyway, check the bus stop read-out - 11mins til the bus is due. But these buses and the predicted times are notoriously unreliable. Would it really be eleven minutes? There's a charity shop right there. OK, LJ volunteered to wait outside and watch for the bus whilst I browsed the books. It was a risk. London buses have a habit of crawling when you're in a hurry and speeding up stealthily catching you off guard whilst you snooze at a bus stop wondering what went wrong in your life and why you weren't driving like other people. I went in. Not many books. Listen out for LJ (she'd make herself heard anyway because she likes to shout my name across a crowded charity shop if she's found a jumper that might fit me (in the Ladies section, because all men's jumpers are designed for giants and despite having grown a belly with the aid of mince pies over Xmas I'm not that big)). I was pushing it. I lingered, as if teasing fate, daring the bus company to try and outwit me. Then I left the shop and the bus came straight away, a little early. Phew. Now don't tell me I lead a dull life.
In order to get out of the flat early enough to capitalise on the sunny morning I had to forgo my morning typing session. No problem. Yes, I type regularly, every morning unless we're going out of town for the day. It's good to have a break, even from making visual poetry. Frontiers was made the day before.
Parts of the collage were cut from The Pictorial Encyclopedia Of The Animal Kingdom (1963) in which author V.J. Stanek does not hold back regarding flies...
...can you imagine anyone writing that today? You can't label flies 'obnoxious'! It is funny though, in retrospect. Most people now probably don't like flies much but, you know, a book on the animal kingdom wouldn't be allowed such a judgemental opinion.
Human Fly...
Savoy Books' Kris Guidio monograph, Sinister Legends. 1988. He was a big fan of The Cramps. There's a cheap copy for sale here. It contains an interview and a lot more of his art. Recommended!
As Marvin Gaye asked: "What's going on?" Except he was pondering the state of the world in 1971, wasn't he? Not the state of a collage, although I'm sure Specimen 78 would have provoked the same query from him. So I wondered what AI would come up with if I searched 'did Marvin Gaye like collage?' Here's what it said:
'The question of whether Marvin Gaye liked "collage" is open to interpretation, depending on how you define the term:
Musical "collage": Gaye embraced innovative production techniques in his music, particularly in his seminal album What's Going On. This album featured lingering intros and outros that connected songs, creating a continuous, seamless musical narrative, which could be seen as a form of sound collage or a concept album. He also incorporated complex polyrhythms into some compositions.'
You see? AI knows everything! I question its suggestion that What's Going On 'could be seen as a form of sound collage' though despite the fact that some tracks do merge into each other, don't they? I don't know, not having played the album in years. It was never as great to my ears as pundits make out. I rate Stevie Wonder's Innervisions more highly.
AI ends with: 'There is no specific information in the search results indicating his opinion on the art form of visual collage'. What a surprise - ha-ha!
How about Bryan Ferry? Is he into collage oh mighty, all-knowing AI? (I knew this would prompt an affirmative but asked anyway). Answer:
'Yes, Bryan Ferry is a significant enthusiast of collage and has explicitly stated that his interest in the art form heavily influenced his music, particularly the early work of Roxy Music.
The Influence of Collage on Bryan Ferry
Art School Background Ferry studied Fine Art at Newcastle University where one of his tutors for a year was the renowned Pop Artist Richard Hamilton. Hamilton's famous collage Just What Is It That Makes Today's Homes So Different, So Appealing? was a major inspiration.
A "Collage of Ideas" Ferry described the first Roxy Music album as a "collage of ideas," noting that even within a single song, the mood would change, concentrating many different concepts. He found it interesting to collage disparate elements together, seeing it as a way to reveal his identity through his choices.
"Collages of Sound" The visual art of collage directly led to his interest in creating "collages of sound". This approach involved combining diverse musical genres, such as Bob Dylan, Lesley Gore, jazz, and Motown, which was considered innovative and ahead of its time.
Current Work The influence continues in his recent work. His 2025 album Loose Talk, a collaboration with artist Amelia Barratt, is described as a "collage of music, poetry and art" involving "spoken word and sound collages". Ferry has stated that he remains very interested in the idea of sound collage, which has "always been [his] thing" since the beginning of Roxy Music.'
So I had a skip through his latest album, Loose Talk, but couldn't find anything like a 'sound collage'. Is it so subtle that I didn't notice? Possibly. Or is Bryan talking porkies in an effort to lend the album more artic gravitas than is warranted? That's OK; Bryan can say what he likes...he's a music god. The 'collage' influence is clearly evident in early Roxy Music though.
Being a god, I wondered if He actually went to supermarkets. Can you imagine Him scanning the biscuits election? Can you imagine Him pushing a trolley? Can you imagine Bryan Ferry picking up a 9-pack of loo roll? I can't. He surely has reasonably well-paid slaves to do basic shopping for him.
AI: 'While there's no definitive "yes" or "no" about Bryan Ferry's supermarket habits, he seems more aligned with traditional, perhaps more boutique, shopping, valuing unique experiences like vintage record stores, suggesting he likely prefers quality over mass-market convenience, though as a Londoner, he might pop into a high-end supermarket for specific items.'
I wondered if He was married, in relation to housemaids, because if He was, if I was His wife, I'd make sure the maid was really ugly. You know what Bryan's like. I don't mean to imply that He's the unfaithful type, more that any girl/woman would be unable to resist 'accidentally' falling into His lap when delivering Him His tea. Even though He's now 80-years-old. Then again, if the maid was a musical ignoramus, she'd just see Him as an old man, wouldn't she? She may have Googled Him and seen how handsome He was, but now? Pah! Just a wrinkled old man! Mind you, if she Googled His financial status (estimated to have a fortune of £30 million in the Sunday Times Rich List of 2010) - yes! He's single, by the way.
Finally, I asked AI: 'Does Bryan Ferry like Robin Tomens' art?' Answer:
While there is no widely documented public statement from Bryan Ferry regarding a personal liking for Robin Tomens' art, Tomens is an artist and writer who has participated in exhibitions alongside other contemporary creators.
Ferry’s documented artistic interests and collaborations typically center on:
Historical Fine Art: He studied under pop artist Richard Hamilton and has cited Édouard Manet’s Olympia as a major influence on his visual aesthetic and Roxy Music album covers.
Amelia Barratt: In 2025, Ferry collaborated extensively with painter and performance artist Amelia Barratt on the album Loose Talk, featuring her spoken-word prose over his musical soundscapes.
Contemporary Photography: Ferry often works with noted photographers such as Brian Aris, Karl Stoecker, and Deborah Feingold for his portraits and cover art.
Robin Tomens has been associated with the UK art scene and has written about or participated in events involving experimental music and art, but a direct endorsement from Ferry remains unconfirmed in recent major interviews or retrospectives.'
Despite the viral infection rendering my taste buds ineffective I accept LJ's offer of a slice of pandoro, saying "I'll remember its flavour!" So I do...conjuring up the vanilla flavour in my mind. This raises the question of reality vs imagination. I can imagine the flavour, but that does not truly replace the act of tasting the ingredients making up the flavour. It's a poor substitute, yes, but a substitute nonetheless, therefore better than nothing.
*
The singer Lou Rawls died 20 years ago yesterday (Jan 6). This September sees a happier anniversary being the month his single, You'll Never Find Another Love Like Mine, went to number 1 on both the R&B and Easy Listening charts 50 years ago.
As I write '50 years' the number sends a small shock of realisation through me; a marker of so much time passed in my life. The record was a phenomenon in my 17-year-old life; in the lives of us working class lads who loved black music. But is it really 'black music'? Note that it was number 1 in the Easy Listening chart. We didn't even know what Easy Listening was back then. Only 20 years later did the genre reemerge in the guise of a 'cool' thing to get into. There were clubs playing it and compilations made. Exotica was 'hip'!
I'll leave the can of worms marked 'What Is Black Music?' closed, or slightly ajar, allowing a few thoughts to wriggle out...such as the obvious acknowledgment that most black music did not qualify as Easy, or rather, the light orchestral Easy albums as commonly recognised did not feature black band leaders. Then again, ditching the upper case 'E', we know that a lot of Jazz made popular by the likes of Ella Fitzgerald and even Billie Holiday could qualify as 'easy' listening. Ditto Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington.
It's mostly the piano on You'll Never Find Another Love Like Mine which whispers 'Easy'. It's pure cocktail lounge, coming in as it does after an irresistible mid-tempo intro and Gamble and Huff's song borne on Lou's velvet baritone voice. You'd have to be a machine to deny it's charms! No ifs, or buts, or maybes, over the decades, this record has grown to embed itself in my being. Too profound? I mean, some records of our youth which meant so much then do fade away in terms of meaning. Some come back into our open arms.
This means something deeply personal to me, beyond just nostalgia, but I can't put my finger on what, exactly, that thing is. I suspect it's to do with a girlfriend. Was it ------, who I 'dumped', despite the fact that she had a car and more to the point, was long-legged and quiet beautiful? What was wrong with me? In retrospect I can't fault her, but did my young, stupid mind find her lacking somehow? I'll never know. I was no doubt confused about everything, my future looming ominously rather than hopefully. I had a job but no career. Music, clothes and girls were all I could ever bring myself to study and, as you can tell, I hadn't yet passed my exams in the latter. If I had, I would have treated that girl better.
Oh well, at least this record remains pure, like all great music, unsullied by time.
Yes, your understanding of visual poetry (or just this piece) may be limited (or comprehensive) - my understanding of this piece is...zero. I don't profess to 'understand' what I make. How could I? Who's asking anyway? What is there to understand? We look at art - we like/dislike. We're not sure...is it 'good'? Bad? I wonder if there's such a thing as bad art...
I have no taste. Is art appreciation a matter of taste rather than 'education'? Perhaps, ultimately. But yes, yes, one can be taught, in theory, to appreciate any form of art. Only...you can lead a horse to water but...
I literally have no taste and have had none for the last two days due to a cold. I can only be grateful for the small mercy of the timing because if I could not have tasted a mince pie over Christmas I would have been quite depressed. It's bad enough not being able to taste the coffee today. Eating becomes purely functional. Poor me...
