Shadows - the noir project

Do you know the world is a foul sty? Do you know if you ripped the fronts off houses you'd find swine? The world's a hell. What does it matter what happens in it? - Shadow Of A Doubt, 1943

The Shadows project continues. I try different techniques, styles, approaches...looking for not only one but possibly two or three that will work to my satisfaction. This is personal, I told myself the other day. It's personal in that it's taken so long to come to fruition; I've lived with it for a long time. 

More than that, it's personal because although it will appear in printed form and be available to purchase I know it won't have much appeal to anyone. It'll be even harder to sell than visual poetry. Why? because it will be something other than visual poetry, yet include elements of it. It will be something other than a comic, ie a narrative told in pictorial/text sequences, although it will naturally have a sequence of my own making which, perhaps, only I will partly understand.

The lack of conclusion in the 'story' will mirror its contents. There will be no neat ending. How can the mystery end? Because...

If, as is often suggested, we make art first and foremost for ourselves, Shadows represents that idea totally. If only I feel a real sense of satisfaction when it is printed, so be it. It would please me greatly though, of course, should anyone buy it and get something from it. 

TTFN!

 

The Shadows Comic Book Project (influences & inspirations) / Spillane - John Zorn

 

The Shadows project is under way, at last. I'm working with the texts I started to create in 2009. Yes, you read that right, 2009! As a totality, they form an assemblage/collage/cut-ups of various texts. You can imagine the problem(s) - where it ends (does it have an ending?) - how to end it - how to make them form something like a 'story'. That was the biggest challenge, namely; should it even be a story? Did William Burroughs worry about that when he assembled his cut-up 'novels' of the early 60s? I doubt it. Mind you, I have tried not to go too far down that particular route of literary dead (end) roads. 

Here I've posted some key influences/inspirations. Initially I saw it as a booklet but have since decided to make it a 'comic'. What is a comic anyway? A collection of sequential art. Right? Perhaps it won't be a comic in the normal sense then, if there is a normal comic since...when? The 60s underground comix? They at least, despite the radical nature of the content, followed a more or less traditional panel format. many comics have since broken the old form. I don't know the extent to which mine will, but suffice to say, yes, there will be panels, but also, I may break up that idea too.

You can tell it's a work in progress. I am still playing with presentation ideas and techniques. meanwhile, here's a list of inspirations/influences:

Sin City by Frank Miller (party for the visuals, also the noir aspect)

Hardboiled literature (pulp fiction, Chandler/Hammett etc)

Film noir (the mood, ideas/visuals)

Pulp sci-fi

John Zorn's incredible Spillane homage and The Bribe album

Elmer Bernstein (big, brassy mood music made for menacing action!)

Las Vegas grind (for the sleaze)

You get the idea. So visual poetry takes a back seat but has not been abandoned completely. I'll be turning to the Olympia and rattling off some typed work as and when I feel I need a break from inhabiting the Shadows. 

Thanks for calling in - TTFN! Do check out Spillane at the bottom of the page - a masterpiece!

Collage: Another Space Age Advance / Film: Starship Troopers

 

Another Space Age Advance, RTomens 2020

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! 

Sleep tight. Don't let the bed bugs bite.

Cold vispo: For Your Information / I love borders! / My art travels and so do I, occasionally / Music: The Shout (soundtrack) by Rupert Hine /

For Your Information, RTomens, 2025

Here's a new 'cold' (collage of old) vispo piece. Two old pieces went into the making, with print overlaid then further cut-out shapes added. At this rate, it will take me ages to weed out the rejects from the boxes and recycle them, but that's how it's going.

I love borders! Don't you? Oops, I forgot to cap the 'b'. You'll think me one of those crazy people who care about the type and number of people who come into their country - oh no!!! Perhaps you can't get Border biscuits in your country. I'm not sure if their sales cross borders. 

My art has physically crossed a few borders. It's travelled to Japan, Austria, Portugal, America, Australia...and probably other countries I've forgotten. It's more well-travelled than me. When I did fly it was usually to Europe because I can't be doing long haul. That and the fact that I love France as a holiday destination, especially the South and in particular Nice. As I always say, in my 'other life', I'd live there; perhaps in London too, although once in Nice, I can't imagine what would draw me back to London.

Here I am posing outside the Jean Cocteau museum in Menton. A cool building...with cool content!

Here's the view from the top of the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Nice. 

It's the greatest gallery in my world but is currently closed for renovation so wait until it's reopened before you go. You really should go. 

Now I must stop posting holiday snaps and mention this film soundtrack...

The official soundtrack credit went to Tony Banks and Mike Rutherford but Buried Treasure's Alan Gubby has spent seven years (!) getting this collection of Rupert Hine's recordings for the film together and it's a real treat pop-pickers.  If you like electronic film cues and short mood pieces this is a must. The clip below features John Hurt as composer, Anthony Fielding, making musique concrète.

TTFN!

Music: La nef des fous by Robert Cahen (Recollection GRM) / Film: L' entraperçu (1980) / Concrete Poetry: Get With It

 

Reissue of the Year? Already? Yes. GRM have just released La nef des fous (The Ship of Fools), comprising of pieces composed by Robert Cahen in the GRM studios between 1971 and 1974. He's now known as a filmmaker but his mastery of sound is evident on this album, as it is in his films. Beautiful, terrifying, ominous sounds blended brilliantly across five tracks in which any calm, Zen-like atmosphere is interrupted by transmissions from aliens whose messages, when decoded, promise the total takeover and rewiring of your neural pathways. You will be lost in 'music' and thankful that GRM have found this treasure for us to savour.

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Here's a piece I made recently.

RTomens, 2024

When Conor McGregor went Ultra Instinct / Anarchy magazine cover / Collage: Almost Human / Israeli Electroacoustic Music

 

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December, 1963

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RTomens, 2023

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What do you mean you never knew there was such a thing. Neither did I until I found it in the Folkways archive. From 1981, this is a first rate compilation.

Vispo: Inter-ruption / Film: Figures In A Landscape

RTomens

Type-oh.

Typo: a friend's message included a good one recently. Talking of a film, he wrote that it included a lot of 'slow-motion shits' - ha-ha!

So, to a film, Figures in a Landscape (1970) directed by Joseph Losey and written by Robert Shaw. When I say the plot simply consists of two men being hunted across an unnamed country it may sound boring. It isn't. It is one of the most engrossing films I've seen for a while. Why? 

It's bonkers. 

The dialogue is odd. 

The scenery is incredible. 

The helicopter is evil. 

We're not told why they're on the run or where they're aiming for.

It's an action film trapped in an arthouse experiment.

And it's great!

Drawing/Print: Art-Like / Madeleine Moment / Film: Living

 

RTomens, 2022

I had a kind of madeleine moment this afternoon when biting into a McVitie's Milk Chocolate Digestive biscuit - something I haven't eaten for so many years, decades, even. The crumbly biscuit...milky chocolate...the satisfying yet unfulfilling experience which makes you want to eat more and more and more...deluding yourself that you will be totally satisfied the way you are when you eat something heavier, more wholesome...but no...you just start to feel a bit sick...

I lazily refer to Proust, not really knowing what I mean, except to say that the taste instantly took me back - but when I went 'there', I found nothing but a blank, a ghostly presence (me) in a misty past; time compressed to a single point, a nostalgic dot...

Talking of nostalgia (for times never lived in), we went to see Living the other day. It's directed by Oliver Hermanus from a screenplay by Kazuo Ishiguro and between them, a South African and someone born in Japan (although he moved to England when he was five), they've created a quintessentially English film. By which I mean they've captured the restraint and repressed emotions of 50s English life as we imagine it; in the office, at least, but also in society, best expressed here at the funeral. Jamie D. Ramsay's cinematography is sumptuous, using a rich colour palette straight from the era. The script is spot on and the story of small triumphs perfectly told. Mr. Williams' (Bill Nighy) delight in discovering the 'thrill' of an arcade game encapsulates the smallness of a life lived within constant self-imposed constraints. A beautiful film.

New Vidgeo - classic...

 

Film: Lola - Jacques Demy (1961) - 60th birthday of a French classic

Jacques Demy’s first feature, LOLA, starring Anouk Aimée, premiered in France 60 years ago today. I needed to tell you that. It gives me an excuse to post this clip which, despite the quality, I had to post because it's one of my favourite scenes from any film. Jacques Demy is a film god to me. I have no 'gods'. But he would be one. If you know what's good for your eyes, heart and soul, you'll know Demy. If not, start with his feature-length start. You won't regret it. Goodbye Frankie! 

Philosophy by Johnny Guitar and the Sergeant in The Third Policeman

 

True, isn't it? Unless you don't smoke or drink coffee, in which case I'm reminded of the Adam Ant lyric from Goody Two Shoes: 'Don't drink, don't smoke, what do you do?'. Don't tell me or Johnny Guitar that there are more fundamentals in life.

Talking of wisdom, here are five rules suggested by the bicycle-obsessed Sergeant in Flan O'Brien's The Third Policeman:

Always ask any questions that are to be asked and never answer any.

Turn everything you hear to your own advantage.

Always carry a repair outfit.

Take left turns as much as possible.

Never apply your front brake first.

You can't argue with those, especially if, like me, you're a cyclist. If you've not read The Third Policeman you really should. Unless, that is, your literary taste does not run to murder, crazy, fantastical mechanical inventions and other-worldly madness akin to Samuel Beckett on acid. There, you want to read it now, don't you?

Good luck to your luck.

Film: The Lusty Men (1952)

But what are they lusting after? Success and a woman, of course. The title might be off-putting but it's Nicholas Ray directing and Robert Mitchum starring alongside Susan Hayward so...

I thought it was great. I do love men in stetsons, although not in the lusty sense, of course. This film is a stetson fest on par with any Western. There are other great clothes, such as the jackets both leads wear and the suit Wes wears later. He wants to make it on the rodeo scene. Mitchum's character, Jeff, is an old star. They pair up and along with Wes's wife, Louise (Hayward), hit the circuit. No spoilers.

The rodeo scenes are great, if you like watching horses doing their best to get men off their backs, which I do. Mind you, the bulls are downright mean. If they throw their riders they're not content with that and frequently set about putting holes in them with their horns, at which point the clowns have to distract them. It looks a damn sight more dangerous than bullfighting. 

The characterisation is good and Mitchum is magnificent. Recommended. 

Vispo: Change / Film: Midnight In Paris (Woody Allen)

I could say you must change your way of looking at things to appreciate Vispo, but wouldn't want to assume that you don't already know how to 'look' at it. Besides, it's not so much how you look, but how you think, eh? I call this 'Vispo' because..,just because? Because it's more Vis than Concrete, maybe.  It derives from an original piece created on the Olympia typewriter, then altered through scanning. 

Going through a Woody Allen phase these days, having virtually ignored him since those classics around the time of Annie Hall....up to Zelig...oh, and Hannah And Her Sisters. I don't know why but he got...forgotten, which is criminal considering how great Bullets Over Broadway is...and Mighty Aphrodite is good too. Last night we watched Midnight In Paris - what a treat. As always, a great cast and story, about which I'll say very little in case you want to watch it. Toulouse-Lautrec makes an appearance, as does Salvador Dali, played with relish by Adrien Brody. Ernest Hemmingway features too. As romantic (of course) and funny as it is, Allen also explores what it means to be dissatisfied with contemporary life and yearn to have lived in a specific era. 

Film: A Special Day (Ettore Scola, 1977)

 

Antonietta Taberi (Sophia Loren) is stuck at home whilst her family join the crowds in Rome to celebrate the visit of Hitler. Loren looks exhausted in this film, as befits the housewife of six boys and a brutish husband. Her myna bird escapes, which leads to her meeting Gabriele (Marcello Mastroianni). To say much more would ruin your enjoyment but the relationship is beautifully developed and played out to a non-stop soundtrack of militaristic music for the fascist parade. My only quibble is that the version we watched was overdubbed, which at first made it sound more like a spaghetti Western but once used to that the film is a melancholy treat, both actors on top form. Highly recommended.

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...

Concrete Poetry: Typo 35 / The OCD Type / Typewriter Dance

Typo 35, RTomens, 2020

I  would love to say my fingers dance across the keys of the Remington in a flurry of inspiration but of course that's not usually how constructing concrete poetry happens. It can, for some, be an incredibly laborious process, the very careful positioning of the key before the strike. I rarely worry about such precision...and I like the chance element, or the slightly 'off' aspect of shapes or lines I may create. This apparent contrariness may be part of my character. 

Some people crave, and strive to create, precision. I cannot help but look at precisely constructed concrete poems without imaging their creators being the types whose desks are always in perfect order, as is their fridge and their wardrobe. They strike me as being OCD types (pun intended). 

Here are people literally dancing across the keys of a typewriter. 

 

Going Nowhere - Fast! The Loveless

Something was in the air in the early 80s - or rather, in the hair? Boys I knew grew out their locks long enough to have them shaved short or swept back at the sides with exaggerated quiffs and stray locks  running wild. The Stray Cats and Robert Gordon rebooted rockabilly and in 1981 Kathryn Bigelow's The Loveless, her debut full-length film, was released. 

I watched it over and over on video at the time. Today I watched it again. It came up when I was searching Willem Dafoe so I thought 'Why not, for old time's sake?' This was Defoe's first lead role. The script is minimal, the pace designed to allow time to linger lovingly on all the key 50s biker iconography. Some compare it to The Wild One, for obvious reasons, but it's that plus Scorpio Rising, for sure. The bikes, chrome, leather, lipstick, smokes, Coke vending machine, flick-knives, swastika tattoo, macho posing make it a retro feast, self-consciously so. 

It was called  'a pathetic homage to the 1950's' in a New York Times review but the writer didn't get it, obviously. This is the blank generation rewritten as biker chic. The lost and loveless mirror a fag-end of New Wave that would become No Wave in going-nowhere-fast attitude. Even John Lurie and his brother Evan were involved in the music. If the dialogue's corny and the cool layered on thicker than hairspray and grease no matter, it all adds to the atmosphere. I loved it all over again. If you haven't seen it, the clips compiled in the video below make it seem a far more 'happy' affair than it really is; more like an average teen flick. I post it for the song and a taste of the visuals. Some stills below.

Film: 3:10 to Yuma / Injun Nightmares / Glen Ford Cool As F*ck

Westerns were something I grew up with as a kid, always on TV, seen but not watched, of course, because how the hell would a kid appreciate the art of the Western? The story, morality, characterisation, historical significance of Hollywood concoctions? Never mind the misrepresentation of 'Indians'. I tell you, they scared the hell out of me, just as they were supposed to scare everyone. I had the horrors for ages that those evil Injuns whooping it up, dancing around campfires and sneakily firing arrows through a cowboy's chest - silently! - thwack! Suddenly the arrow head is sticking out of his chest! As a precursor to the horror of the alien erupting from John Hurt's stomach it was pretty potent. "Leave the hall light on, Mum!" I used to imagine feeling the blade as they removed my fresh, youthful locks! I had a vivid imagination. I suppose most kids do.

We were both home the other day when 3:10 to Yuma came on the telly. Ah, the classic! I'd never seen it but I was soon hooked not, perhaps, for reasons most people are. I stared amazed at the framing. I mean, 10 stills from this film, blown up, would look like great art in a gallery. Richard Prince eat your heart out. Then there's Glen Ford. Glen Ford acting like James Dean, so I thought as I watched. Not that he was playing a troubled soul, more the attitude. OK, perhaps not James Dean, but Marlon Brando? What I mean is that wry smile he wears for most of the film. His totally casual stance faced with the rope. "Fuck you" he seems to be saying. The kid just doesn't care! Not that he's a kid, but what I'm trying to get at is the rock'n'roll attitude he adopts. Perfect anti-hero. The way he wears that stetson. The good guy tasked with seeing him onto the train looks, by comparison, like a wuss, a caring, morality-bound square! 

Hell of a film.

RTomens, 2020

Collage: How The West Was Won / Film: Death Rides A Horse

RTomens, 2020

Watched Death Rides A Horse the other night. I can't recall which came first, the collage above or the spaghetti Western...one influenced the other, probably. Anyway, Lee Van Cleef is always watchable, isn't he? Giulio Petroni does a pretty good directorial job. The opening scene featuring the appearance of the gang over the brow of a hill is especially good. It has all the hallmarks of a spag Western, including obligatory close-ups of eyes and even a musical countdown to a duel, made a bit special in  by the hitting of piano keys before the triggers get squeezed. The dubbed voices always make spag Westerns odd by nature but the big bonus here is Ennio Morricone's soundtrack. 

Film: Bait (Mark Jenkin 2019)

Mark Jenkin's Bait had me hooked (ha-ha) after a few minutes. The mood is immediate, intense, artful but not alienating, unless you expect conventional cinema. Shot in 16mm on a 1976 Bolex camera and hand-processed, Bait not only looks amazing but in a vision of self-evident physical treatment fuses the grit of a Cornish fisherman's life with the very texture of how it's presented. Salty air virtually sprays off the screen. There are many beautiful close-up shots of objects which revel in the kind of detail only a camera can capture and the sea is rendered hyper-real in grainy black and white, creating the feel of it as opposed to simply the sight. 

The basic story is about the tension between locals and second home-owners but Jenkin is not just siding with one or the other. It describes complicated and conflicting family relationships, harsh economic realities and how people deal with a changed world. 

In a shot of the studio on the website I noticed a picture of William Burroughs on the wall, which made me wonder if his cut-ups in both print and on film had any influence on Jenkin. When asked in the interviews I've seen there's no mention of him. Perhaps, like so many influences for any artist, they were subconscious? Bait is edited in such a way that's very suggestive, at times, of Burroughs' cut up films. I couldn't help but also think of French New Wave rapid cuts whilst watching.

I can't praise this film highly enough. Do watch it when you get the chance.