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HOLY MELTING MOTHERBOARDS BATMAN!!
There’s nothing like being in a foreign country to make one aware of the passage of time… not that that's a bad thing
I've had more time to watch sunsets than I've had in a long time -andthe flexibility in my schedule to make sure I catch as many as possible :)
I like to walk on the beach, the tumbled stones on the beaches are the best in the world for skipping, I'd say. Not that I can skip stones, that is a mostly masculine talent from what I can tell… I envision I may end up painting rocks and trying to sell them to tourists on the Promenade in the summer.
“hey gov, want to buy this ‘ere art rock? Only 2 quid.”
There’s not too much to report news-wise, I’m still recovering from the damn Toshiba motherboard melting down and going a week without really having a computer which has thrown my novel writing in to a Plutonian orbit temporarily… but I’ve been compensating by writing too much poetry –which I am –only barely- able to refrain from copying and pasting in here. It’s not the diary kind of poetry (I keep that to myself) but is actually me attempting to enter the post modern poetical discursive with some penned lines... but I won't inflict them on you unless you're interested. (ask and you shall receive)
When I am back in Canada I will return to being a devout computer Mac-o-phile.( I should have taken my ibook to Wales… should-a would-a could-a...
Damn you PC overlords and curses to the fried motherboard, which I’m not turning on until after I find an external hard drive to try to download the rest of my files to –since my wee pendrive won’t hold it all. (once upon a time we had pen knives -to sharpen quills, now we have pen drives... the better to promote the transportation of powerpoint presentations.)
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WALKING
On Nov. 3rd I walked from Aberystwyth (aber –ust-with) to Borth (borth)… three and a half hours along the coastline, up and down the grassy Cliffside following an old path. We were lead by Peter, a member of the Walking Club and an expert in the trails of Wales (happy trails, in Wales, better bring sensible shoes…)
Vilborg form Iceland and David from China were also on the expedition, the latter providing the occasional outburst of Chinese opera to lighten the mood! The hour and a half walk to the bus stop along winding blind-cornered narrow roads designed for a single horse-drawn cart was made spectacular by the Welsh driving small automobiles towards each other, weaving in and out, -I still have no idea how they know who is going to stop, when it is necessary, to let the other by...
The walk to the bus stop to get home wasn’t quite as much fun as going up and down the sheep trail, along the seaside, but led to a greater appreciation on my part of the existence of sidewalks and the effectiveness of shrubbery as a barrier.
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POTATOES
You can buy baby potatoes in a can… or porkscratchings.
Postage over here is so horrifically expensive it’s best to either not speak to people via paper letter, or to send a carrier pigeon.
Fruit comes in fun sizes and is prepackaged for you so you don’t have to look through to find the ones you like best, and then get it weighed. You just buy the fun size of your preference.
Eggs don’t need to be refridgerated in the UK, and milk often doesn’t need to be refridgerated either.
On the news they call left-overs 'eco-food' and there is a movement to try to diminish the quantities of left-overs that go in the refuse bin. My willingness to eat left-overs is viewed with general suspicion.
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INTERNATIONAL TEAS:
I had tea with a achromatically haired gentleman from the Orkney Islands. He brought maps and photographs and we had a good chat about island.
Today I had tea with a young woman from Greece and learned that the Greek tradition is to wear the ring on the left hand during engagement and then on the right for marriage. I also learned that one shouldn’t trust olive oil from Spain and that she only trusts olive oil from her family’s estate –but she’s not allowed to bring it on the plane due to all the anti-terrorism laws.
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ACADEMICS:
Sarah says (to Tess on IM:)
well, in a way it is too much fun to be called school, but then when you're wading through books on semiotics, hermeneutics and the academic side -all the tautological hegemonic bureaucratic patriarchal praxis that suffuses the fun side of things, one begins to understand that it really is work -sometimes!
They make certain that an arts MA has just as much academic work as any other MA -as well as the 287 hours you're supposed to spend in the studio 'producing' -it's bliss for me, because I love the academic crap as much as the studio wanking….
“ …modernism most aptly describes the attitude that propelled most of the forward-looking art produced from the turn of the last century, that that attitude was generally one of reaction, and that reaction in any given decade since the 1890s was not already against the same thing, or set of things. Often there was a reaction against a reaction or a reaction within a reaction. One of the most interesting in the 1970s as ‘postmodernism,’ a term describing as aesthetic position that denies the validity of modernism at the same time that it seeks definition as a reaction to it –thus validating the movement it denies.” (pg 8-9 Barbara Buhler Lynes, Postmodernism a Virtual Discussion edited by Maurice Berger)
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IRONY (Alanis Morrisette style; that is to say: inaccurately applied)
Ironically, (after ribbing a friend for going on Christian conversion camping weekend) I accidentally ended up in a full church service yesterday whilst going to the Remembrance Day ceremonies. Actually the massive organ in God's house was really something to behold. It sounded cool too.
Going into one of the old churches was on my checklist of things to do whilst in Wales and the light coming through the stained glass windows was a sort of religious experience to me, providing revelations about the role of artistry in the world and what it means to have created something 200 years later… what remains and what it means. What is the life of the art and what is the life of the artist? If one doesn’t become connected to the story, to become part of the cultural narrative dialogue, be it history, urban myth, pop culture, or the story that is told by x or y in some form or another… then what occurs to you (and your art?)
Relevance to the self will only endure as long as the self does. After that it’s either an easy fade away on the cultural compost heap being mulched by the edge-softening forgetting that will occur in a generation or two, or you survive… in the matrix of the narrative (now available in digitized format, which works so many more wonders than masticated berries spat upon the back of a hirsute hand placed on a cave wall as a stencil.)’I was here. This is my story.’
The modes of expression may have gained complexity and multiplicity, but has the basic urge evolved?
Do I want to fight/wrestle/holler/shock jock my way into wrestling with the media dogs and try to wedge my way into the art history books, or be passive and hope miraculously be recognized, that I and my art will randomly become relevant somehow to society…. or am I content just to work on my work, being relevant to myself and then let the measure of my life be made by others?
I went to Remember and ended up thinking about Forgetting.
Hard not to think about forgetting as a list of hundreds of names are read off… T. Jones, B. Jones, M. Jones, S.L. Jones… and endless list of names without faces. Ancestors, perhaps without offspring, killed young in WWI, and then the list of those who died in WWII… and on, and on…
What is death? There’s leaving the corporeal self, and then there’s the post-mortem cultural death, when all your connections are gone and you’re forgotten… Erased.
There are artists who died 400 years ago who feel more alive and familiar to me than the passing of a relative I didn’t know…
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PURPLE
I spent the day painting today and enjoyed the day, feeling occasionally competent, but on the walk home, after the too early sunset, was wondering ‘why DO I paint?’ it’s such a peculiar thing, and such an odd affliction that perpetuates itself as a persistent proclivity…pah! Who know? It just strikes me as peculiar that such a thing as pushing pigment around on a palette could cause me to peregrinate to a new land.
But how else do we move around in the world, but by chance, happenstance, whim and desire? For example: I hear a Gogol Bordello song on the radio, looked them up on line and now may be basing my Xmas vacation around catching one of the last concerts on their tour…! Go figure!
START WEARING PURPLE NOW! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p_81l4DXlwM
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November 5 Guy Fawkes Day
Remember, remember the fifth of November
Gunpowder, treason and plot.
I see no reason why gunpowder, treason
Should ever be forgot...
Remember, remember the Fifth of November,
The Gunpowder Treason and Plot,
I know of no reason
Why Gunpowder Treason
Should ever be forgot.
Guy Fawkes, Guy Fawkes, t'was his intent
To blow up King and Parliament.
Three-score barrels of powder below
To prove old England's overthrow;
By God's providence he was catch'd
With a dark lantern and burning match.
Holloa boys, holloa boys, let the bells ring
Holloa boys, holloa boys, God save the King!
A penny loaf to feed the Pope
A farthing o' cheese to choke him.
A pint of beer to rinse it down.
A faggot of sticks to burn him.
Burn him in a tub of tar.
Burn him like a blazing star.
Burn his body from his head.
Then we'll say ol' Pope is dead.
Hip hip hoorah! Hip hip hoorah hoorah!
I went to a Guy Fawkes Bonfire night in Macyllneth and was pleased to discover it had been taken over by the local pagans turning it into a fire show with music and darkness instead of the usual wiz-boom fireworks (though they had a variation of those as well.) I enjoyed the spinning fire-umbrellas and the bat lantern that wasn’t supposed to catch fire as much as anything else. I was hoping to see the traditional catholic burned in effigy, but alas, no straw Guys in sight.
There was a grumbler in the crowd, every few minutes he would mutter ‘I came for the fireworks, regular fireworks’ as the percussive band paraded to a haunting beat and men in black wearing devil’s masks ran around igniting things on fire… It got better with each repetition as the pyrotechnics climaxed running up tall metal frames that went on fire, rockets that ‘flew’ across a hundred foot stretch on an invisible wire to crash into the far end spectacularly… and then undulating ground based fireworks that climbed into the sky for the finale…
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COMPUTER BLUES (blue and black screen blues)
Sigh. The technicians at school appear (after four days) to have determined there is an issue with the Toshiba’s motherboard –which they’re going to quote me a replacement price for, which I probably can’t afford.
Right now I have my flatmate’s father’s spare laptop (so none of my files are on it yet)… Thank you Rohan!!!!! I’m lucky to have awesome room mates who have things like spare laptops, fresh Oreo cookies, and extensive collections of animation on dvd.
I’m also very glad that the roommate who allegedly didn’t know how to use the bathroom or the shower in a civilized fashion has moved out, one room is now empty; and the other spare room is now occupied by a Celtic studies student who is learning Welsh and came to the Bretton Dance night last night (hurrah! A convert.)
Unusual people turn up to the dance nights: saltof the earth locals and students from Iceland, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, Boston, Holland, and Canada! I have to say that so far I’ve found people who like to folkdance are usually very interesting and affable. (It’s hard to imagine linking pinky fingers with an angry person…)
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BRAGGING:
I’m silly-happy that I made a mention in a little paper and increased public silliness by a small measure:
http://www.wilmslowexpress.co.uk/news/s/1020145_gnome_place_like_home_is_moved_on
http://www.crowtoesquarterly.com/ issue #3 contains a poem I wrote, issue #4 has 'The Long Road Home' on the front cover... hurrah!
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