Bruuah-ha-haaaa!

The Halloween post from the best skate blog on the interweb (when does 're-posting' cross over into straight up theivery?) included these 2 images - I couldn't choose which to post so did them both. I had no idea at the time that everyone else loved that Corey O'Brien graphic as much as I did - one of my all time fave boards to this day. And a quick shout out to the OG Skate City in Bromley where we'd buy our 'bootleg' Slimeballs.

Peej at the Albert

Off to the Albert Hall to see this lady on Sunday. I know this is an old photo

but I used it because a. I like it, and b. Val took it. And Val's nice.

Post-show update...
PJH/RAH


Dark, feathered, loud, soft, choral, primal, weightless, heavy, old, new. At points it felt like a sun collapsing in on itself, the density taking everything in the room toward it. Polly Harvey.

(we were WAY closer than this but I-phones are shite in low light) rhyming.

the 'Zone

A marathon of these on Blu Ray is the best night time remedy for boredom filled days at work.

A Blu bonus is the original sponsor adverts they drop inbetween the episodes:

Locals Only

Waiting for this...

Quote of the day

Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes.
Walt Whitman

You ever tried meditation? I mean really? It’s crazy hard.

Sometimes when you’re stressed and panicking about everyday life problems, you get tired, run down and so – you go to bed. Only to find when you get there that your eyes are fixed open, your brain running at 100 miles an hour. After a time you tend to focus your thoughts down onto something familiar or comfortable and this begins to relax you somewhat. This can be a subconscious move - your brain retreating a little to stop it overheating. I always end up on skateboarding. The physical act of it is probably the main reason, constant flow, carving, the smoothness of surfaces and good weather required to be able to skate are all positive images, and thinking of things I want to do or places I would like to be is a great distraction. The vision of bright yellow sunshine in a transworld blue sky while in a pitch dark room at 1am seems to be enough to metaprogramme the grey tissue and ensure a slow drift into the world of dreams.

So thinking on this, I decided to write a piece called ‘Concrete Meditation’ due to the images of skateparks and grey transitions that would frequent these thoughts. And as I sometimes do before using a title, I Googled it to check if it already existed in some other form, as sometimes I tend to avoid an overused or already ‘taken’ term. This is what I found:

Meditation is of two main kinds, viz., Saguna (concrete) meditation and Nirguna (abstract) meditation. In concrete meditation the Yogic student concentrates on the form of the Lord Krishna, Rama, Siva, Hari, Gayatri or Sri Devi. In abstract meditation he concentrates the whole energy of the mind on one idea of God or Atman and avoids comparisons of memories and all other ideas. The one idea fills the whole mind.

Now I’m not saying I ride around grinding curbs on ‘God’ but it’s the practice of focusing on form vs idea that I find fits what I meant really well. So seeing as it does already exist, I won’t be writing the piece I was planning to because after discovering that info, I guess I don’t need to anymore. Who knew, I’d been meditating all along.

Tying in (vaguely) with the Richter post - here's a Sonic Youth track
in respect of Kim and Thurston's marriage being no more.
(ha! like they're my friends or something... I never even met those guys!)

art2

portrait images never seem to work to well on the blog, but anyway... these are from our visit to the Gerhard Richter show which was ridiculous on so many levels that I had to leave before being made to feel totally unremarkable. Pics are the Tacita Dean turbine hall projection which is also really good - despite all the blond haired Tarquins and Tabernacles slapping the screen going 'waa waa waa' while there fucknuts parents stood drinking their Starbucks.

art

Isaac was very pleased with the first canvas for his bedroom.

Fresh from the Fos SE14 clearout sale.

The inward facing life and times of a minstrel from beyond.

I am not here to help, merely to resent. The least pliable materials imaginable combined within that initial bang to form this body. As long a time as it all took to combine, suppressed under the weight of dying stars. Gases no longer - but eyes, toenails and vicious tongue...

I am not here to support or advise, complement or even tolerate, simply to ignore with extreme prejudice. To maintain excommunication and build upon an ever increasing outward defence. Higher sharper, blacker, whiter...

I am not here for these things, because I am not from here. I never was. This has been confirmed to me time and again and continues to be so. The space between the language, the vacuum where thoughts are no longer born, a blanket of blank looks and fallen gazes. As I sing out loud, these earth songs - but only to myself...

And the talking - but the talking - goes on like the dripping of a broken tap while everyone else is trying to sleep, small and echoing. Laser light. All wavelengths in unison, continuous, and irrelevant for being so. The concept of infinity being lost on the majority...

Red, straight, defended, suppressed. Resentment, alien, jealousy, and far too lazy for any useful rage. Sloth within blood flow causes and affects a single eye needle. Pronoun and preposition error, syntax disintegration, contact equalling immolation. All false rhymes to distract from the simple fact that I simply do not belong.

y'know what...

Action Jackson. That's what.

Filmed in the summer. Mellow little roll about.

The flat Mr Fox

You could hear the flesh slap against the front

Wheels

As the car ran him over,

It wasn’t the death strike -

That must’ve happened hours before - but

Damn,

He’d been got good

As they say.

There were 4 or 5 solid pieces of torso,

Orange fur covered steaks.

Like someone had taken the cleaver to him

And lay him out like that to tenderise the meat.

It was as grotesque a thing as I’d seen all year,

Up close anyway,

But still I didn’t care.

It was probably him shitting in my garden,

His babies mewing and screeching into the small

Hours.

I didn’t care that he was dead,

Or how it happened.

Or that his remains were being desecrated by

Each passing bus or

Truck or

Motorcycle.

I saw a pigeon a little later on that morning,

Flattened on the tarmac and guts out,

Dirty grey feathers blowing across the streets of Soho,

It was nowhere

Near

As impressive.

Juxtapoz+Jeremy Fish+Absolut=

Edition 6 of 10. Stoked.

www.aesoprock.com

the sky is filled with light

Reasons the 70's ruled - Part 1.

Nothing/No one – Act II.

I have forgotten again

The weeks now past

My weakness now passed

Memory amended

Personality disorder rebranded

I had the bullets in my head

Ready to fire

One for each line

Perhaps they shot away

While I slept

Or rolled to the gutter

While I strode the paving slabs

Towards work

They are now gone away

Regardless of how much I need them

I carry an empty gun

Without even a flower to block the barrel

My internal dialogue is a song about a

Song

I have forgotten

And the external monologue rings

In my ears but then

Everything rings in my ears nowadays

The lines get longer and state less

It is all steam escaping

From a boiling saucepan

A spider sways above me and curses my name for disturbing his

Sleep.

Goodbye REM

“A wise man once said – ‘the skill in attending a party is knowing when it's time to leave.’ We built something extraordinary together. We did this thing. And now we're going to walk away from it … I hope our fans realize this wasn't an easy decision; but all things must end, and we wanted to do it right, to do it our way.”

This band were quite literally the soundtrack to a really important part of my life. Fronted by one of the people who I respect most as a writer and artist, and who still inspires me to keep writing.

Click here for a gallery.

Release

Both of these are out from today:

Just as a bit of trivia - the Holy Terror was originally going to be Batman.

combo

YouTube/Kittens - always a winner. Throw some lightsabers in there and you're golden... Cheers to my bro for sending me this:

Walken

So your wife goes to drink cocktails at Chateau Marmont in L.A and ends up in a conversation with this guy about how good his cosmopolitans are:

True story.

the view from (not) here

Lu's view of Greenland. I'm watching Gilmore Girls - doesn't really compare...

Quote of the day

One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly important. Bertrand Russell

Anniversary

Today marks 15 years of this...

Happy anniversary wife. X

Quote of the day

Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up. Pablo Picasso 

To do the same thing over and over again is not only boredom: it is to be controlled by rather than to control what you do.

... yawn.

Quote of the day

Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions.  Rilke