My Blag Pages

Past.

Ok. So, I been doing this blag a week or two now and it does get compulsive. Now I find myself forever checking how many folk have visited, who is commenting, following and all. All of that is pretty much a waste of time because, I have work to do, my ‘werk’. Although, having been checking, it seems not a lot of folk are popping back to some of my earlier blags, they get lonely you know! This is not a rehearsal, it’s real art. Art I hear you cry, yes this is part of my art. This blag. That’s why I write the way I do, with creative manipulation of letters in and as word. So, if you go back and see some of the earlier ones you will get the drift. Most of the blags so far have been done when I see a need. Not ‘planned’. And that’s good in its own way, organic.

A good note I must share is that First Site have seen the need to work on the marketing of the gallery. They are looking to appoint a marketing manager (?) and I looked at the job brief. I am sure I could do about a hundred of the tasks but am lacking in about 7,354. So I won’t apply, am too old anyway, am ‘retired’ and doing what I worked all my life for, my own art. More good news, a little bird tells me that one of the lecturers at the Courtauld Institute’s MA course thinks very highly of First Site and encourages his students to go loolk for themselves.

And talking about my ‘art’. I have just scanned thru my previous blags and I don’t seem to have said ought about the range of publications that came out of my MA studies. So in my next one I shall list ‘em and indicate what they are about. I have mentioned G Batch already and that has just gone on sale at a bookshop in Maldon, Essex and is being put on his webpage for sale. More in the dedicated blag to follow.

Future

For my sins at school as one of the most irritating pupils you could ever meet, especially if you were , in mine and other pupils’ eyes, a crap teacher, I was condemned to Teacher’s Training College so I could put my money where my mouth was and show them how it was done. I must have been a crap teacher too if you consider how many irritating kids I had to try to tolerate. However they were massively outnumbered by the great kids who had learned to tolerate me. Anyway I digress. What I was on about is that at St Luke’s we were told about ‘Aims & Objectives’. Although that led to great debate amongst us trainees, and remember we were the dross what couldn’t get enough ‘levels’ to go to proper uni! So it were hard trying to get ought into our thick skulls. But what I understood was ; the ‘Aim’ was the end you were aiming for, so for example, a cake; the ‘Objectives’ were the stepping stones on the way to achieving the Aim, the ingredients of the cake. OK.

So what is my aim with these blags? Well to be honest, to flag up my work and ideas. Why? so as to maybe gain a repertation and generate some interest which may instigate some incoming funds to offset the amounts that have gushed out of every orifice of my accounts to fund my ‘projecs’. And i suppose the blags I list below are the objectives? So when folk read them they gain a little insight into what the hell am on about? Why? Well what am on about is interesting. (?). I think it is becos I spent 45 years pursuing it but i may just be prejudiced. It’s true that when you set out on a journey you know not where you’ll end up. I never thought my pursuit of art would lead me to mystics. I never knew when i learned how to write with a dip pen at junior school one day i would be typing onto a computer with 3 fingers many of the words i learned to spell and mis-spell. One of the things I go on about is the ideas of a bloke called Gurdjeff. I am back reading around that old charlatan. Another bloke, I think, yes AnthonyGeorgeEdward Blake looks like a bloke’s name, let’s call him Age, Age Blake. Now I was skimming thru his book, ‘The Intelligent Enneagram’ and on p54 he says,”An aim has promise of fulfillment; an idea has the potential to be realized; and a seed contains the fully developed plant.” BUT we need to tend to these things with consummate care. That’s why I am saying my what (I think/intend) what future blags will be below. I intend to do a weekly blag topic-ting. Each ting will come from my stable of interests, some of which are ongoing in previous blags. I shall list ‘em, not that most of ‘em will mean much to you until I do a blag abart ‘em. (Oh by the way ‘blag’ is my Essex drawl for blog, I am a nationalised Essex boy now cos I lived ‘ere longer than I did in my home town!) Here’s the list, altho the order will differ and shift:

• My MA publications
• An unfinished Masterpiece inspired by Schlemmer.
• Sogyal’s book and talk
• Lucy wings it all along
• Nono-Stories
• ‘62’ the first photo part of my book on The Genius of RoD.
• Squidgerats writings
• The Dieter versus Ed dichotomy
• Prints
• Lorry heads in bronze

That’ll keep me going for at least 10 weeks. On top of that I’ve got several ‘new’ books am working on. They won’t be all hand-printed and bound, they’ll be more like G Batch, commercially printed and maybe but not definitely bound by my fair fingers.

So watch this space.