Thursday, December 19, 2002


The Plague Dogs

There is no more to say on this. A deep book like no other and with these men at the end. Heroes for everybody.



(From http://www.birdsofbritain.co.uk/features/mao-aug-00.htm)



(From
http://www.pembrokeshirecoast.org.uk/coast_2_coast/wwwroot/english/articles/walking.asp
)

I have just found out from reading this article about Animal Research that Berke Breathed's comic strips in Bloom County which satirised the whole animal/testing/rights thing, were instrumental in getting the Mary Kay Company to stop their own testing regime. You can find the relevant strips in The Night of the Mary Kay Commandos laugh and think about it.

Don't laugh at this one. Yet another thing to Boycott. My blood is making those movements that water does in the bottom of the kettle when you first switch it on. How can a company (and forty others by the sound of it) ask for money from a creaking and famine ridden country? They could probably recoup $6 million by not using as many paper clips (I know that is over the top but you know what I mean so don't quote this out of context). No more Milky Bars for me!


More Telescoping

Well, not much more. I got the telescope out again to look at Jupiter and the moons had all shifted around. One was just on the limb of the planet and one was far off but the other two were nowhere in sight. Gone off down the pub for a Christmas drink with their mates from Saturn though I hear they got into a fight with that mob from Neptune and Uranus. Titan always wins and Oberon is useless without Titania to back him up. It all started when Titan tried to pull Callisto and Ganymede got uppity about it. Titan then asked why Ganymede was worried because he didn't think he was interested in girls. You can see that it all just fell apart after that. That snitch Mercury flew to the Police and when he heard, Puck, the barman shouted out "Nymphs and Shepherds, run away". Jupiter had to be called to bail all his brood out but Neptune and Uranus were out for the evening so I think all their moons are still locked up. Proteus and Ariel told me all this in their one phone call.

Please don't complain about this anthropomorphisation of celestial objects; the Greeks and the Romans were doing it long before I did and not so very differently either. It must have been too much Scrumpy Jack last night. Martin says he has drunk most of his Christmas beer already and will have to go out and get more. He has just bought a Palm from the company and his wife, like mine, is shouting at him for ignoring her.

Christmas is just to tacky now. I can't think of one person I have met at work who seems to be treating it as anything more than an excuse for two weeks holiday and lots of drinking. Even the wall-to-wall Carols on Classic FM seem hollow. 'If all the year were playing holidays....'. Radio 3 did just play Vaughan Williams' Fantasia on Christmas carols which is better because that is one of only a couple of Carols. Talk of Vaughan Williams has remined me of ....

Great Driving Moments Number 43.

Driving along a long, straight road, under a grey sky on a 'no-weather' winter's day, with bare trees in clumps. The music is Vaughan Williams' Fantasia on Greensleeves. I need to say no more for myself and you will have to guess the rest for yourself. I have just done a Google image search with the phrase 'Winter Trees' and despite throwing up many pages of photographs and paintings, not one looks anything like the clump of trees I have in my head. For a start, most of them are on sunny winter days rather than non-descript days.

Christmas for me seems empty without any mention of the reason for it. I know that seems obvious but it is not obvious to many people who I feel would take offence if you took away their traditions of the season. It lasts too long nowadays and while I can seer that, in this country, Christmas has always been an excuse for excessive behaviour, up until now, it has had some spiritual backing to it. Of couyrse, all this may just be nostalgia for Christmasses past, the 'they don't do Christmas like they used to' syndrome but it is now so spiritually empty that now I feel empty before the day in the same way that as a kid, I used to feel sad that it was over. The peripheral stuff around Christmas should be long walks in the cold (Grey) days and songs. For most people it seems to be lots of drinking and an excuse for behaviour that normally would be frowned on. It's OK; I'm not about to get out my Puritan costume.

It is now 07:45 and still pitchy dark but it is the sortest day the day after tomorrow. Apologies to any Antipodean readers; just throw another Turkey leg on the Barbie for me and I will be right over. Keep those tinnies cold for me. And with that rampant stereotyping, I think I should leave this topic for another day.

Wednesday, December 18, 2002


Jupiter

I got the telescope out last night and pointed it at Jupiter. Being Dad's old birding telescope, I wasn't expecting much but it showed Juipter up as a small disk with faint markings and all four of the main moons strung out in a diagonal line like this :-



(From http://web.singnet.com.sg/~ngkguan/astro09.htm)

The tripod I have is not very good and it was difficult to focus it very well but it was enough to be interesting. My daughter was fast asleep and my wife said it was far too cold to be outside. Maybe a well-wrapped up trip to the Coastguard station one night would be in order. There is a large car-park right by the station and it is often full at the weekends. You can drive the car right up to the promenade and read the paper with the wind and rain battering the car. Sometimes, people are warned not to go there in case they get washed away. Out in the estuary, there is a large wooden post held up with diagonal spars which was one of two Mile markers used by ships entering the Mersey to estimate position and speed. The othe one was ..er .. a mile upstream but it vanished some time agao only to be found during the construction of the new Crosby Leisure Centre, buried in the dunes. It must have been a slow news week because this made the front page of the local paper. This reminds me of the recent question about a day when the BBC cancelled the radio news because nothing happened and played Piano Music instead. This actually occurred on Good Friday 1930 (see the Day with no News) but it must have endured for some years because either Morecambe and Wise or The Two Ronnies did a sketch where there was no news on TV so they showed a piano player who was subsequently shot which of course brought the news-reader back on screen with the breathless announcement that a Piano Player had just been shot. I know it's not very funny but it's a classic all the same even if I can;t remember who it was. I am pretty sure it was Eric and Ernie. Not up to the standard of the Singing in the Rain sketch or Breakfast to the tune of The Stripper but OKish.

It is a wonderful, cold and sunny winter's day here. The haze is lying over the city softening the vapour trails and trying its best to define a line between the sky and the ground but it looks more like those pictures kids do before they understand perspective and leave a gap between the land and the sky. Sky is up and land is down. What is at the join? The infinitesimal! I hope it stays as nice for the weekend. A long walk in the cold somewhere would be nice but then again there is a Pop Art exhibition at the Tate. It's actually about shopping but the union of that set and Pop-Art is large. Spot the allusion to Venn diagrams from all those years ago at school. Actually Venn Diagrams make good art on their own. Maybe you could create an artwork by asking people questions about themselves and then displaying the results as Venn Diagrams. Even better and this is quite exciting, get the visitors to the exhibition to answer questions about themselves using some form of computer equipment and then display those results as Venn Diagrams on huge wall-mounted screens. You could extend the questionnaire to be web based as well and use those data. Apart from the wall-mounted displays, all of that is within my ability and possession at the moment. Sounds like the result on an Oblique Strategy doesn't it? The starting point was me asking Martin for a random phrase to kick this off and he suggested Jupiter. I learnt Venn Diagrams before I went to secondary school but I do remember my O-Level maths teacher doing a lot about it. His name was Mr Pears and he is third from the left on the Front row (Those sitting - not the charming children doing the Harvey Smith Salute on the floor) in this picture. I am sure he is dead now but I remember him as an excellent teacher as was Mrs Pearce who is sixth from the right (again on the chairs) in this picture (which is the left half of the whole thing). It is strange to think of all these Cherubic looking children being into punk rock and ska but they were. I wrote 'puck' rock there which is probably a Freudian slip relating to the rural aspect of our school. I don't think I will ever go back as no-one would know me now. Mrs Pearce may still be there but surely no-one else?

Longing sigh! resigned shrug of the shoulders and back to work.

Twin Tub with Guitar

The title above is linked to a wonderful site. I saw Twin Tub with Guitar and various other of Bill Woodrow's sculptures at the Tate a few years ago but I never imagined he had made so many as his website shows. This is interesting modern art. I was asying to someone who has just seen a Tracy Emin show, that a lot of modern art is worth visiting even if you don't like it (or actively hate it) simply because it is so interesting. There is no line between artists who are in it for money and those whose motivation is more er... artistic. You sometimes wonder if some artists just try to think of the most obscure and stupid thing to exhibit for the sake of taking the mickey or whether they really believe they are doing something worthwhile. Bill Woodrow's stuff is actual sculpture with talent and artistry but what about crumpled up pieces of paper stuck to a wall? or the lights going on and off in an empty room? You can see why Modeo man thinks modern art is rubbish (Not Modern Life is rubbish - that is all just a Blur to me), but then mondeo man likes things which need talent. (I am only being half ironic there).

More Modern Art here - the nominations for the 2003 Beck's Futures Award. The stuff which catches my eye (and is also easy to get to because it is specifically a web-project) is Nick Crowe's. I especially like the spoof site for the Tate Gallery, a sort of self-reference, though I warn you that the accompanying music is as cheesy as Tesco's Dairy Aisle. The 10 Point Plan for a Better Helsinki is also rather good but you will need Acrobat Reader. A website without words, just shapes and colours. Maybe Tonight. Just Maybe.

Monday, December 16, 2002


Codex Mendoza

Black mood got blacker for a while and then, personally lifted slightly but for others it has been a terrible day.

My picture is now on the Internet at this location. Cup of coffee to the first person to email me at rdeweyden@hotmail.com with the correct position.

Friday, December 13, 2002


Capacidad

Black mood at the moment. Various things seem to be conspiring to make life as difficult as possible but as I have said before, I am a lot better off than 99% of the world's population and I mean not only in monetary terms. I keep returning to very bad poetry at the moment. A few weeks ago, I wrote about my old 'Metrical Journals', and I have tried to start getting back into writing them. Yesterday's poem was the first and was just random thoughts over lunchtime, a bit like my Random Fridays but in verse. I have managed to dg out a cartrdge pen so that I can write long hand rather than the short scratchings on the Palm. My Brother sad yesterday that he's fed up wth ths country and wants to emigrate to New-Zealand. I don't think he is serious and I am sure that 'The Lord of the Rings' has not been his influence. Many things mean I cannot contemplate this at the moment. I did think about Canada some time ago for no other reason than seeing Linda Kitson's journey across that country by train. This was part of the Great Railway Journeys (Why is that not Journies?) series on the ever wonderful BBC. I love travelling by train though I don't often use them. Usually it is only on holiday that I manage to get on board a touristy type train. The main rail system in this country is falling apart; only this week the Government has given money to help ailing rail company, Connex which has been the greatest joke in the privatised rail system for ages. A good non-crowded train journey is always exciting. I used to love travelling home from here to Malvern on Christmas Eve but now I imagine it is hell. Give me the Ffestiniog railway over that any time. The railway has one terminus at Porthmadog, and the trains leave across a long pier (see it here in a storm). We used to walk across it when we weren't actually travelling on the trains and would have to go down the bank when the trains went by. We have been promising to take my daughter on the train sometime but I think it will have to wait for some better weather, though it would be quiet at this time of year. Come to think of it, there is no need to emigrate. Things are quite good here.

Thursday, December 12, 2002


Animism - Dynamism

Was it always this sad or bad?
Or is it duty denies me refuge
in the insanity of happiness?
the dances split by days
and joined by midnight,
when we, as cool as Angels
girded cities with our laughter,
to die each night in poison
wrought so lovingly from earths
and fields we loved in daylight.

Between the hop fields lie the roads of 1897,
the single tracks of memory like cilia or synapse.
The empty sky flattens all this agriculture
to its formless best, the nourishment of history,
and I feel this should have been a battle ground,
so quiet with the ages gone and wasted.
Ghosts and ancestors drink together in these towns;
they live and love the winter with their faded minds
before their judges, drunk and cold, dismayed and old,
die happy in the warm-lit bars of distance.
No Government could reach this place, no tendrils
of the Vortigen we have to charge us with insanity,
to break our minds with virtual, grey anxiety.
The world is far away from here, so lost and far,
and we speak in languages they banned so long ago,
and sing the battle hymns of revolution
though we have lost all idea of reason, meaning
and the danger they once possessed for us.
We could kill with song and sound
at distances they could not reach with any gun.
We could sing them dead each midnight
and then retire for heavy suppers in the bars
we made of silence and ungoverned land.
This is the passion we have lost,
the rhymes of nineteen-eighty-four,
so metrical and loved backwards in the woods
and ice-bound lanes of this, the last, lost county.
See us in the detail, in the maps and gods,
the obscene pagan carving on the Christian church.

This is animism living in the marches.




Over hill, over dale,
Thorough bush, thorough brier,
Over park, over pale,
Thorough flood, thorough fire.


Is it me or does the world seem slightly madder than it was a few months ago? The boss men seem to be as thick as ever and we do nothing about them. Maybe they are mildly more intelligent than the rest of us and so we don't really notice. The people in charge don't seem to have any intelligence which allows them to carry out acts which the majority of people find positive. They are good at justifying their actions with bluster and obfuscation so that it sounds like they had no choice and that 'it was for our own good' rather than the reality which is that it is for their own good and their egos.

This minute, I have just read that Mary Hansen of Stereolab has been killed in a cycling accident (See here for BBC article). Rather than pithy words, an action which would have met the ideals of Mary's ethos would definitely be in order today and, as it says on the website, spin some lab vinyl tonight.

This has led me to thinking about how, the death of Mary Hansen, would for most people mean nothing. It is only because I like Stereolab and know the names of the band members, that it caught my eye. I suppose she counts among my list of ther Great and The Good but she would also register if she was on my dislike list as well. Do we all know too much about the world to stay sane or is it just that growing up and gaining responsibilities and duties means that we worry more about how things will turn out in the long run? I sometimes catch myself wondering what the world will be like after I am dead and trying to tell myself that it will not matter because I will be insensible to it. That does not work because I care now about my descendants, all of them and how the world will be for them. There are many things to worry about in the world at the moment and the worst of them are not the dangers of terrorism but of environmental impact. The great plagues of the middle ages and later, had a far more devastating affect on the world than anything I could dream of. In fact, until recently, just existing was painful enough for most people but to them it was normal. Are we getting into Zen here? Life is all pain and it is only by accepting that fact that you can rise above it and by so-doing stop the pain affecting you. As one of my colleagues says - deep breath and calm down.

Wednesday, December 11, 2002


From Birnam Wood to Dunsinane


Till Birnam wood remove to Dunsinane
I cannot taint with fear.



I finished The Girl in a Swing and feel slightly empty. When I picked it up to re-read last week, I had no recollection of that happening the first time I read it, but now I seem to remember a period of deep melancholia simply because the book had ended and I didn't want it to. The story is dark and frightening ( I could not read it in bed) and yet you feel uplifted for having known the characters. I need to write a note to myself about how it made me feel so that I will not forget next time I pick it up (in about 2021). The book has a masterly weaving of the Agamemnon with a modern tale. So much of the story goes untold and it is better for that. As far as I can recall, there are no descriptions of the appearance of even the main characters; you are left to make up your own image. In your head, they become your own ideals. Read it and you will want to be there. The beauty of the intetnet is that as you read you can look up locations and in this book, they are all real (as they are in most of Richard Adams' books). See the Coombe Gibbet, The Blowing Stone, the Uffington White Horse where Karin wishes for something to make their fortune and has the wish answered in the form of The Girl in the Swing. I understand that in real life, the Enigma of the Girl in a Swing factory has been unravelled which makes a nice postscript to the book. Right! Now to try and find Watership Down (read the customer reviews). I do seem to recall the same sense of disappointment that the book had finished as I did with The Girl in a Swing.

I am feeling confused at my lack of memory of the first reading of The Girl in a Swing. I seem to remember that all the German Romantic Poetry (There seems to be a logic in putting 'Romantic' after 'German' - The other way round would mean something different) was what first made me write my own (awful) poems. My favourite poem from he book is one by Heine which starts 'Wenn ich in dein Augen Seh..' (When I look into your eyes). I can't find it on the web other than for the first line and I can't remember it well enough to write it down without spelling mistakes. I had forgotten the poem, 'The Dwarf' (Or the Gnome).
but it made me sad this time. From all ths falls every poem have ever written and therefore I am grateful for that, (even for the bad ones). I was looking through the notebook I bought in Bali in which to write poems, and found one I had forgotten or overlooked because I though it was bad and it was strange. It was narrated by one the girls in a Trance Dance and seemed to question why she never remembered what happened in the Dance. Of course I have forgotten to bring it with me today so you will have to wait. Maybe I will look at again and see that it is really bad. Anyway, here is the first part of the long poem which I posted the other day and then took down because I didn't like the ending. And now to post and publish.


Un-titled November 2002

I returned to a most special place in memory,
by accidental and un-thought out design,
to walk the blasted, empty tracks
with the minds of all the academic early men
who burned their vision into my mind
from the depths of artifice and ingenuity.
There are people at a distance,
known faces, without names but loved
and happy in this interval of real-life.
I could not speak to them for fear of knowing
them and forcing dredging of our common memory
for things we think the other likes or wants.
The day darkens, dampens and encloses me,
wraps me like some tiny animal
the children found beside the road and loved
and thought that they could mend with love.
My mother at the door, corrected them
and wrung the necks of those poor creatures,
sending many children green and crying
away into the night that suddenly was darker,
colder than before, with less love than they thought.
But I was raised above this fate and was loved,
unspoken but with definity if not divinity.
The tracks are gloomy, dripping, and colour
all the stream with grey complexity, shadows
of the mazes summer makes to shelter animals.
But here, they open up and only ghosts find cover.
The track walks on ahead and opens into fields,
un-sown pastures growing earth and nothing more.
If no Crow spoke in that furrowed, hallowed ground,
I would not know it, for it begged a raucous caw,
synesthesia of earth and bird-cry,
linked by twenty years of poetry from school to here.
I stop at this edge, imagining myself a target
of the raptors, high and black and mighty,
ready to fall to earth and tear and pinion
any idiotic creature mad enough to run through here.

Monday, December 09, 2002


Breaking on waves of Mellaril.

I don't know what to write about. I am steaming through TGIAS and it as if I have not read it before. I seem to have changed so much that the whole thing is completely new and exciting. Occasionally, something surfaces but I am having to re-image the whole book. The cover and the title make it seem like a potboiler but is certainly isn't. It also isn;t anything like any other Adams books and I can see why it raised eyebrows when it first came out. Definitely not for children and even with its terror and nasty things, it is one of those books you do not want to end probably because that would underline the end of the love story which is what it is really about. Being a father now, I have a different attitude because of things I will not define so as not to spoil the story if you try to read it. And with that it is back to the book.

Friday, December 06, 2002


No Passport Required

I finally finished Molesworth and what a surreal ending it has. I also read two more Horrible Histories and learnt loads about Scotland and all the English kings since William the Conqueror who I didn't know was illiterate. King John could not read either so he never signed the Magna Carta (Latin for large wagon - making John the first white van man). We were always told at school that Richard I was the nice one and John was the nasty piece of work. Recently I have started to realise that this is all just propaganda. The whole lot of them seem to have been ignorant thugs, thieves and murderers. 'Gawd Bless yer Maam.' seems a little empty after this. All this does not show too many repuplican sympathies; the Royal family do NOT rule the country do they? The fact that an airhead Royal was number three in the poll of Great Britons is a little worrying. The other Royal in the list was by no means an airhead though she did show some thuggish tendencies. She is of course this person :-


(From Amazon.co.uk)

In his programme about Windsor Castle, Dan Cruickshank sauntered past this painting hanging on the wall of one the state rooms without comment which should not have annoyed me but it did. I am not one to equivocate the past so I will move on to current reading matter.

I have, at last, started 'The Girl in a Swing' which has a far deeper intellectual meaning than I ever guessed when I read it at 19; All this stuff about The Agamemnon and the various allusions to other high-brow literary stuff. It actually struck me on starting this second reading that it is actually a bit plummy but I am sure that is deliberate in order to contrast the up-tight Englishman with the abandoned behaviour of his Danish Lover. What I did get from it all those years ago, was the unique atmosphere of Southern England Summers which pervades the book. I don't recall anything which made me think it was winter though I am sure some of it was set in that season. I have also discovered that the original edition of the book had to be withdrawn as the subject of a lawsuit by a woman called Kä the (it has the space) which was the name originally used for Karin. Some articles say that the name was changed from Kä the Geutner to Karin Forster because it was easier for English speaking audiences. For a book with so many literary references, this seems unlikely. Just shows how history is written. I am only a tenth of the way through it and Karin has yet to appear. More after more.

Tuesday, December 03, 2002


Drones

I listened to In Tune last week as I normally do, driving home from work. The live guest for the day was the medieval music group - Mediva - a spelling which gave me trouble when looking for their web-site. Their music is exquisite, a rareified mix of voices and those many 'interesting' ancient instruments which make a sound, a modern musician could never hope to match for all his technology. So much Medieval music use drones to fill out the sound. Modern music, even religious music seems to think that the melody will carry everything when the real world looks for continuation and repeat rather than the full set of variation. I often feel that this is why the thump-thump of most dance music appeals to most people at a young age. As I get older and my tinnitus removes the top-end of music, I feel less inclined towards the Bass and Drums and more drawn towards drones and defined sounds. There is so much scope for music. You remember those kiljoys who come out with a list of all the possible permutations of the twelve notes and then say that all possible musics have been written. That ignores the major part of music, the sound itself. Then there is the infinite range of playing styles from my clunky sub-Dave-Brubeck block chords to the delicate flowers of the most accomplished Classical musician to the subtle yet fast hammering of the Kotekan. Kotekan is breath-taking. It is like that mid-eighties effect of interlocking melody in different channels of the stereo like in 'Love and Dancing' by The Human League. However Kotekan is an infinitely variable thing rather than a sledge-hammer repeat using dub-techniques. You could say it is like two virtuoso pianists improvising with each other at double speed. Kebyar music, of which Kotekan is an integral part is like rock music and indeed is not much older than it. This has made me think of another variation which buries the myth of all possible musics, that of the scale. Balinese and other Indonesian music uses scales different to our twelve notes. Indeed, older Western Classical music used scales slightly different to modern ones. Taking the 40Hz concert pitch and deciding on the other notes based on the Pythagorean description may result is something harmonious but is it right all the time. So much rock music is detuned to create the effects. Want exactness? Use a sine wave generator or a Stylophone though of course at the time they first came out I wanted one and now, thanks to the Palm, I have one, yet another way to annoy your friends.

The world is so much better with a sound-track. If your name is Gareth and you have or had a copy of the book - Godel, Escher, Bach then email me at RdeWeyden@hotmail.com with the answer to this question - Where did you go that day when you didn't come into work and we went round to see if you were OK?

I did of course mean Planned Obsolescence. Bye.

Monday, December 02, 2002


Obsolescence or Art for Art's sake

There are strange things happening at the moment. I keep hearing "Ashes to Ashes" at odd moments mostly, it seems, as I get into the shower. Maybe the bathroom is haunted by Major Tom. I feel a bit blasted because of all this ASP. Occasionally it spills off my work machine and I think about implementing it on the web-site but I am resisting as this is simply a journal. Oh, what's the bloody point?


Everything seems a bit closed in at the moment. My head is a bit full but it is difficult to tell if it is a physical thing or something I am trying to get together in my mind. I so desperately want to write some poetry but it is just for the sake of writing something rather than having any ideas. I do have a few ideas but they are all old ones. Suspended in Gaffa might be a good description of what I feel like but for KTB it might mean something quite different. I though it was about a co-respondent who bottled out which shows how clever I am.

The weather here is awful. All day, the wind has been gusting and whistling around the building and our slightly strange feeling of being detached from the ground is not dissipated by the sound of large bits of debris being thrown into the huge metal rubbish skips on the site. The larger pieces actually make the building shake which is almost as dsconcering as the movement of the Clifton Suspension Bridge when large vehicles drive over it. I used to cycle down to it quite often and lean against the railing looking down. On several occasions, I was touched on the shoulder by a kindly old-lady who was checking whether I was OK (I had a major debate there as to whether I should use the word 'alright' but alright is all wrong). I always was OK thank you. Where was that little old lady when the Joy Division fan from our college launched himself of the bridge one rainy Saturday night? He was OK actually as he parachuted down suspened under his great-coat and landed in the mud with only a sprained ankle (well, I might not have the details right but the spirit is there).

The point is this. Rain is wonderful. Sitting on the step and watching it is wonderful. I love the rain. I love walking in it and I love getting inside out of it. I have never come across any situation worth dying for and I hope I never will. Music keeps us all sane.