we are all made of...

what the whatwhat

 

sometimes things have nothing to do with anything. 

I mean honestly what the hell is going on here...

Conflicting advice

Gentle voices have of late

Been telling me to kill

Or perhaps that’s too distinct

They have whispered the blues to me

Warm breath on my neck

Reassuring me that there would be no consequences

Fire in my throat

A clear mind

There is little more terrifying than a clear mind

Not much left to fear after pure love and security

The true sign of life for some

Is the true sign of the end for others

When joy is weighed down by the shadow

When you only ever laugh while in company

But then

The screams

Bourbon soaked and

Arms scarred

Shouting for you to rise

To fight for everything

For everyone

Ice down your back

The biggest joke of all

Looking to the end of the world and seeing the edge

That really does exist

And you are surrounded

Hands taking and souls giving

Souls or something

But you are far from alone

And whom do you reach out to

When all these words all make so much sense

Though the voices are all at once black and white

They’re the first truth and the last lie you’ll ever hear

This is the reason you sing songs

The reason you drink and write and

Bang the drum.

Reverse creep while the goddamn television keeps me down again

Genius idea 1;

I figure

If I log three things at a time

Maybe one of those will save time

Grab someone

You

Them

Condense correlate

Aggregate

Life is like this

A rambling haiku of misspelling

Non-linear

Constant asides

Accidents forgiven

Mistakes forgotten

Love remembered

Someone else’s guitar

While your voice sings along

Albeit silently

A secret well known to all

This late in the game

Nothing linear

If anything

Experience and actions become reversed

Perfect and symmetrically opposite

A crippled symmetry

Here I am alone

Red all around

Flowers and

Wine and heavy curtains that she bought and got made and

Hung

Here I am alone

Pretending I am young though not wanting to

Be

And any focus or point or anything of something that once there was

Long since left me - for sunnier climbs no doubt

Genius idea 2;

Sit and force it to come

Back

The words are here

there somewhere

Light up

Pour

Swallow

Close my eyes and lie about the page having an end

About there being rules and facts and a real world

Just outside somewhere

Even with this sky as light as it is now at nearly 9pm

I see the reality through the gap in those dark heavy curtains

How long before we all end up just coasting along a path

Because that was the easiest thing to do

The safest thing

No one to follow anymore

No one left to lead now

What a predicament

How are the others dealing with this I wonder…

Do they still have each other

These thoughts are laid down in too abstract a fashion

Too camouflaged to be considered (I am aware - I am not stupid)

An intentional wasting of my – and your – time

So why bother

Because ‘one day’

One day they’ll all wake up

And who knows

Maybe I will too

But until then I now have this responsibility

Then and now

My opposing forces

Mirrored and so unaware of each other

Countdown is beginning

- has begun

My mistake

The morning birds now sing outside

Into the nighttime clouds

So at least I am not the only one in the wrong

Here

And I remember that I used to do that

And far from lamenting that time

I am glad to miss it

I shed not a tear for the naivety of our youngest nights

Full

Stop.

1939 - 2013

The only thing that ultimately matters is to eat an ice-cream cone, play a slide trombone, plant a small tree, good God, now you're free.

WWIII

'World War 3' is a working title. This is the start of the start of the beginning of a short story I'll probably never finish... peace.

Ours is a small story, told from inside a far bigger one. The biggest story we’d ever been part of – and the biggest there would ever be.

The house was merely shell. Orange brick turned to white chalk. Fragmented and abstract. Blackened, charred. The bright smouldering long since cooled. Luckily for us the layout of the small 5 room building was such, that when the last of the big blasts came, the shockwave passed the south east corner of the house in a kind of slipstream. This left the large rear bedroom more or less intact – structurally at least.

We had the 3 beds for the 4 of us to share, a luxury that we’d told the children not to let on to anyone outside the family. The small stove worked fine and what was left of the bathroom was still attached to the inside wall of the bedroom so the toilet was workable most of the time.

Running water hadn’t been anyone’s reality for I think about 3 months by that time. It was hard to know for sure. We knew the date from the radio broadcasts, but the events of the period overall, were all just blurred into one another. The important thing was that the 3 remaining exterior walls were mostly intact also, forming something that still resembled a home. Or at least what strangers and scavengers could recognise as having been a home, once upon a time…

We had managed quite well for the year since last winter – the one they named ‘the dead winter’. We had seen neighbours leave in the hope of settling somewhere more populated, seen others perish. We had watched as those who had retreated to the countryside and outer suburbs - returned only to fade away weeks later. Meanwhile the decision was made that we’d stay put – wait it out. What we expected to happen wasn’t entirely clear, but we felt staying in one place would be safer for the kids.

We were wrong.

Quote of the day

"Skateboarding is not a hobby. And it is not a sport. Skateboarding is a way of learning how to redefine the world around you. For most people, when they saw a swimming pool, they thought, ‘Let's take a swim.' But I thought, ‘Let's ride it.' When they saw the curb or a street, they would think about driving on it. I would think about the texture. I slowly developed the ability to look at the world through totally different means."
Ian Mackaye 

Quote of the day

I constantly try to reinvent my sensibilities and my ideas. I enjoy some of the satisfaction that I get when I feel good about what I've done. But the process is quite lonely and quite painful. Vincent Gallo

Ray Harryhausen 1920 - 2013

I won't even bother to explain the obvious... article from AintItCool here.

RIP Richie

Quote of the day

In the depth of winter I finally learned that there was in me an invincible summer. Camus.

 

Day to day

A while back I was trying to explain to someone how skateboarders see the world on a day-to-day basis. Literally the differences in what we focus on walking down the street or looking out the train window... They didn't really get it and I guess that's not their fault. Unless you've been doing something pretty much constantly for 15-20 years there's no way of identifying that this random outlook just becomes - not even second nature - more like 'first nature'. It's just who you are.

people of earth...

Quote of the day

And there is a time where you can be beyond yourself. You can be better than your technique. You can be better than most of your usual ideas. And this is a whole other category that you can get into. Dave Brubeck

Mullen

Hardly news

Yet another sideways mood

            overtaken at sunrise by it

contemplating the core of it over

a bowl of granola

Awoken with it lying in bed next to me

On my pillow with me

Looking into my waking eyes

The simplest desire of all humankind

The one universal truth other than death

The single most shared emotion and resentment

On Earth

Is the one of having to get up every morning

And go to the job

I don’t care how good the job may be

and I don’t care about those who love their work

like their work colleagues

their co-workers

Even if my career involved waking up at noon and

Hanging out with international rock stars

Even if I could stay in bed and interview world-famous

Actors and actresses

Over the telephone for a few hours a day and

Thousands of pounds a week -

I would come to  r e s e n t  it

There is no time for work

WORK -

To assist another in attaining a final product that

As recently as a few years back

You had no knowledge of whatsoever

So really how much can it all mean

Sick of it all again

Sick of red wine

Red meat

Sick of bleeding hearts and liars

Sick of both the demands of life and the lack thereof

Work…

There is no reasonable justification for this

I have far too many other things to figure out.

The Creative Act

I love John Frusciante. I can't emphasise that enough. Read this.

A late night

 

A late night

An alternate reality

Lives hanging in the balance

An old man with an old heart

Regretful and wanting

Dissatisfied and yearning

A stomach like a calm sea

Shark mind constantly swimming

A late night

Pangs of nostalgia for

Lovers no longer prisoner

To the anger I bring out in people

If I am good at anything

I am good at that

It is a natural gift

Like death

Or a flower opening to the sun.

  

HerO-J's

 

NIN

 

The Jazz Baroness

Good article here.

Alpha, Gamma

What is responsible

The Alpha waves

The Gamma waves

The will to create rather than diminish

- there being no third option

Today I saw a black woman punch her

Young son

On the street in broad daylight

No shame

No loss of control on her part

He laughed

As though the normalcy amused him

And then she punched his sister

Fist to arm

A good swing

They both giggled and skipped off

As though they’d been caught

Sneaking one more cookie from the jar

Than was allowed

We are surrounded by concrete and cardboard

Rotting apples and unnameable beliefs

Stupidity lit by neon

Beggars on horseback

And a distinct lack of necessary

Desperation

No desire to learn

No desire to love

No desire to grow

A waste of the white matter

Any potential future left unconsidered

The formulae to curing this madness

Could lie somewhere in linear examination

In chaos theory or in the darkness of thick oil paint

In words on a page that though understated

At least try to focus sunlight on these pointless

Ants.

I heart Sarah

mrvtr

 

Again, another blog I go on pretty much daily, but failed to link up until now.
Out of step indeed... MRVTR

Whedonspeare

Jose Parla exhibition

The Empire Strikes Dutch

From Indiewire:

Michael Parbot, a French journalist who gained unprecedented access to the 'Empire' production, contributed his footage to two documentaries: “SPFX: The Empire Strikes Back,” a behind-the-scenes look at the film's special effects, and a 1980 Dutch TV program showcasing lightsaber rehearsal footage and interviews with the cast.

The first made it onto the trilogy's Blu-ray release in 2011, but the Dutch program has only been seen in near-unwatchable snippets, appearing last in 2012 with 15 minutes available. Finally though, our clearest and most extended (30-minute) look has arrived, and it features fascinating conversations with Irvin Kershner, Mark Hamill, and a bashful Harrison Ford.

George Lucas himself is notably absent, but the doc shows instead the incredible technical work done by both the actors and crew, facing such situations as shooting in Norway's extreme weather to depict Hoth, and also how to wrangle Tauntauns and Wampas as well.

Jose Parla

So I'm going to this Jose Parla show this Saturday. When I started the blog - it was going to be a combination of my writing, art and music interests, and some other stuff that gave context to what inspires me and the work I (eventually) produce. That format went kind of awry over the years but it's nice to look back over old posts and see things come full circle. Makes me feel like I'm doing something right...

I was about to post the usual 'hey I was SO into this before you guys...' when I saw the date I posted the original piece - exactly five years ago today. Exactly five years. That's satisfying enough that I don't need to make the point about 'being in there first'.

But I was.

Bob again

Cary Grant was once told, "Every time I see you on the screen, I think, 'I wish I was Cary Grant.'" He replied, "That's just what I think!"

I've been repeating that story ever since I first heard it, and it never fails to amuse audiences, all of whom seem to understand it immediately. Everybody groks that Archie Leach, the poor boy from Liverpool who became "Cary Grant" never fully believed in "Cary Grant," since Cary was, after all, his own invention. On the other hand, here's a similar story, which I also like to tell, that produces very mixed reactions, with some people laughing and others looking puzzled or slightly offended.

An art dealer once went to Pablo Picasso and said, "I have a bunch of 'Picasso' canvasses that I was thinking of buying. Would you look them over and tell me which are real and which are forgeries?" Picasso obligingly began sorting the paintings into two piles. Then, as the Great Man added one particular picture to the fake pile, the dealer cried, "Wait a minute, Pablo. That's no forgery. I was visiting you the weekend you painted it." Picasso replied imperturbably, "No matter. I can fake a Picasso as well as any thief in Europe."

Personally, I find this story not only amusing but profoundly disturbing. It has caused me to think, every time I finish a piece of writing, "Is this a real Robert Anton Wilson, or did I just fake a Robert Anton Wilson?" Sometimes, especially with a long novel, I find it impossible to convince myself that I know the answer. After all, as Nietzche said, "there are no facts, only interpretations"...... Continue reading...

TIZER

My old college chum is having a show. If you dig the smell of spray paint you should go.

Tizer ID crew first solo Show will be at Pure Evil Gallery the 7th March 2013.