What keeps me going drives me forwards, reticently.

My old mate Stuart said he envied my passion for my subject, this comment along with several other ‘likes’ for my visual pun on stools is what helps fuel my passion. Thank you all for those lovely comments; DW, Jools, AWilliam & Windy. Someone frae Allemagne went into my post this week too. I know hardly anyone there but am pleased, maybe it’s becos (am not a Londoner) but I love (the work of) several German ‘artists’ and flag em up?

I had been reticent to post that blArt cos I didn’t want to be a stool pidgeon, even tho I don’t know what one o them is. Is it summat to do wit pigeon Engerlitsch? By the way ken Campbell wrote some good books using Pig-Eon Anglais, I digress I always do, don’t I? after I posted my stool blArt I thought folks will either see me in the mire or may admire me. There you go again, ploying wit werds. I have to adnit it’s not me what plays it’s my lodger, Daniel O’Blarty. Me I wroite rather straight blogs in Querns Englitch, there you see he’s interferlated my typings. He put the ‘o’ in write, the ‘r’ in queen and added a ‘t’ to my Englich AND he says he’s tinking o adding an ‘er’ too or a two too, toot toot too! He annoys me-mind you, don’t you tink that bit in Lord of the Rings film where Gollum’s 2 selves argued was the very best part of the trilogy?! I don’t. We do. You know. You may tink am a split personality or at least I got doo-ality- is there such a werd as ‘ality’? No! but there’s rea-lity, abi-lity* but no a-lity. *Tink abart it, able-ity, she has able-ness etc. Be careful there may be a lity-gate, shun it. I wish he would go, what do you say, he’s ok, he’s better than you? Me that is or rather not me. Anyway so four folk (have you heard the one abart the 4 candles? 4 candles in my life burning in my wind(we’ll not go there), in the rain then, kangools in the rain. Do we ever get kangaroos in the reign? Not if sum Aussies had their republican eye-deers. So these four kanga roos said they dug the stool blArt and am so pleased nay relieved (we’ll not go there). It’s not that I wish to be kept in order by my readers, no, not at all, but I have a reputation to keep up. What?well I like to demure not manure. So am hoping to write a new blArt soon enogh but am preoccupied right now. Today there’s a play off final for Engerlind’s second tear league. (In fact QPR won it which brings about an amazing parallel to the 1970’s. Back then QPR bought Burnley’s best player, Dave Thomas, then came one place behind them as runners up in tier two. This year they bought Burnley’s best player, Charlie Austin, and came one place behind them again! Funny that innit? Then in the evening Ronaldo & Bale are plying their trade making history and vast fortunes while I (we) am-are sitting here blArting away making nothing but a reputed station of the dross. Stop press, and then Gareth said my blog wer fascinating, how good is thart?

The tings I do are hit & miss. Some hit the target, which is hard to find when you don’t always know where or what it is as part of the creativity is opening new pastures, others miss by miles, which in itself can be creative cos then, miles from the target you discover something neworthwhile.

There’s a Bruce McLean show coming up at Firstite an I wer preparing a short report to send to see if Venue wood publish it so I did a lot of reading around the man. I mentioned that he had spent many years going to the Glasgow school of art building designed by Mackintosh. Real strange, I sent it to them on Friday evening and overnicht the building went up in flames, well not actually in the night, but it was not reported here til Saturday morgan, weird. Remind me not to write aboot your hoose. Anyways, whilst I wer studying up on brucie I came across a photo of him doing a performance piece with Sylvia Ziranek in ‘Sorry. A Minimal In Parts’ and that name tinged a bell. I had met her at a bert Irwin launch in 2012 and aksed if I could tek her photo as she looked good and theatrical, I never knew ought aboot her past.

i love this image, especially cos it’s not perfect.

I wish I had known them at the time. Because in 1976 I left teaching to become a self-appointed artisblokefella. I created this first Squidgerat mask)

And I wer going to arrive at the ICA unannounced and demand a job (doing a Muriel in the corridors and having my masked folk running around, in fact it would still be good to do there, or anywhere, let me know if you want me to, for lots of dosh of coarse). I dipped out, didn’t do it. But I knew then and see now it would have been. Would still be pertinent, and bloody wonderful too. I have done several ‘appearances’ in ‘this-guys’ masked, usually at the outset of a standing exhibition.

 

The First Squidgerat did appear in my one man show at Brentwood theatre in 1995.

His appearance and non- appearance was indicative of where I was at, I weren’t pushy enough. I deferred to potential distractors instead of mocking them from inside the masks.

Nobody knows you when you shy away so am determined now to push on with my performances. I’ve already put it forward to a couple of art college places. I have several old shows which would bare light of day, or the limelights. I have new ideas too, one is something which came to me this week about my reticent reluctance to do performance pieces or Retrulart Performance Petesays where in I shall recount tales of the Meeting with Remarkable People I have had. Taking ‘life’ as a performance and telling of my times with Richard Harris, Ken Campbell, Mark Knopfler, Ray Pointer and all the crest. If you can be assed and have a couple of hours to spare you may like to see see-saw my full latest updatedest creative history on my LinkedIn site.

(please note, this is my first try to link to linkdIn and it seems that you have to be a member of it to linkin, not very linkedup is it? Anyway, i may just put my ‘history’ up as a blArt, but not today folks.)

https://www.linkedin.com/profile/edit?trk=nav_responsive_sub_nav_edit_profile

 

Finally, my poem for the week. Do you get paranoic aboot parking too? Hum this to ‘I get knocked down’ by Chumbawamba (one of them, Egbert Bacon, went to my old school, do you tink he saw my buk Apul-One there cos they bought one for their library way bach).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kS-zK1S5Dws

 

I get stressed out

Parking anywhere

Especially rail stations

Burri gerrup agen

 

I get stressed out

Filling in forms

Especially any forms

Burri gerrup agen

 

I get stressed aart

Awaiting replies on line

Or any other ways

Burri gerrup agen

 

I get stressed aarght

I don’t know why

But there it was

Burri gerrup agen

 

I git stressed oot

when i kant link in

burram no gonnu

get stressed art agin

 

I get stressed aarghteught

It has to stop

Need to chill out…be cool

And jus gerrup agin.

ps I posted this on Sunday 25 May 2014. That very day me ole mate DW commented  on it and i asked if I can post his comments. He agreed it’s ok and am doing so because as a ubeing it is good inside to see that my stuff reaches out and touches the mind of others and inspires. That’s one of my basic drives. My mate is aware of my journey, some of which he has shared, and he knows some of the obstacles. Anyway, here is his comment, plus a great snap of him taken when he wer a yung viking.

”

Hilarious!

I love it when Danny O’Blarty takes over and is all revved up, it’s like the road is melting and the trees are bending just like an acid trip.

I fell off the chair when you threatened to burn our houses down with the power of a letter from yerself.

Very true about when you are on the edge as a creative and don’t know where the target is. In my research days we had a series of categories of things to explore, which were:

What we know

What we know we don’t know

What we don’t know we don’t know

We went for the last category.

It reminded me of the great book:

“Zen in the Art of Archery” by Eugen Herrigel

where the key to the skill is not to fire at a target, but to connect all components of the archer, arrow, bow and target. The skill is to sense as each component adjusts when brought together and identify when the optimum connection occurs. It calls for a different type of seeing, where you encourage your perception and actions to sense patterns that can represent a fit.

Pete, your alter ego(s) are now surfing and are like the best of their types, such as:

Dean Moriarty  in  jack Kerouac’s On the Road

Sebastian Dangerfield in J P Donleavy’s The Ginger Man

where they suck in the energy and take it away from the author on a glorious helter-skelter ride

I like this on Bukowski’s notion of creativity:

‘On Bukowski’s gravestone reads: “Don’t Try”, a phrase which Bukowski uses in one of his poems, advising aspiring writers and poets about inspiration and creativity. Bukowski explained the phrase in a 1963 letter to John William Corrington: “Somebody at one of these places […] asked me: ‘What do you do? How do you write, create?’ You don’t, I told them. You don’t try. That’s very important: not to try, either for Cadillacs, creation or immortality. You wait, and if nothing happens, you wait some more. It’s like a bug high on the wall. You wait for it to come to you. When it gets close enough you reach out, slap out and kill it. Or if you like its looks you make a pet out of it.’

 

Weeeeeeeee!

 

Duncan

‘The Lost Boy’,  put in this boat with no oars and set on fire and I was sent off like a viking warrior to Valhalla……..but it didn’t work or else I returned!

 

Falling between two stools, who me? No way Hosey.

Before I begin (at the beginning) I must mention the wonderful BBC2 drama called a poet in NY, http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p01w6llk/a-poet-in-new-york it’s about Dylan (Zimmerman’s inspiration for his stage name)Thomas. It’s very very well done AND you got to watch the dance Essie Davis (Caitlan Thomas) does at 20 minutes in, wow, beautiful and uncannily similar to a dance my girl did when she was a child.

 

She began to dance naturally and so unexpectedly to some music I was playing for a funeral for a friend (Christina Challis). I took several photos which I then turned into her portrait in my ‘master’ piece, Venus Stares.

Took a long time for me to realise that my doing ‘paintings’ was me just merely following in the footsteps of giants but I must admit that since my early days of making art in the mid – late Sixties I never just wanted to idly ‘follow’. I did strike out early on and did portraits with difference. Like this one I did of my li’l sister back about 1968 whilst still in the 6^th form.

my sister aged 14, now destroyed by mice.

Many of my portraits only used the sitter as an excuse to ‘paint’, to manipulate colour, shape and texture on a surface.  Recently I have found an idiom which can hold my idiosyncrasies, digital prints onto canvas. Which I can then leave alone or render, paint, collage, beat up, obliterate, destroy etc. the images which emerge are never meant to replicate the ‘real’ tings…my images are only triggers. For the mind, eyes, senses to take off. My future utube videos will give insight & inroads as well as being part of my art as my blArts are.

 

Do you know that I been held back/down by the weight (wait) of no expectations*? Or maybe, Not Expecting Much. Most everything I achieved was a surprise ( to so many, you? No, not you). * there is a Bruce McLean exhibition coming up at fistite gallery, Colchester in June.

Looking at his work you see a man who spat in the face of expectation, almost, “IF you’re not expecting me to do I can, I shall, I did- up yours.” Now, there is a lot of that in my work too but whereas Bruce got himself (determinedly) into a place where he was ‘expected’ to achieve certain levels (out of art colleges# etc) I did not.

# Art schools have been vetting stations for artists-to-be for years, I declined to go/avoided them determined to prove my worth by sheer hard work and my innate talents. By my old friend Percy V. Rance. Rancid may be a better name? It doesn’t work. Sadly after 45 yearns making art I remain Anon., arsk me if am bovvad? Well actually I Yam cos, like me ole mate Van Coff, I’m skint. But my brother won’t send me no cash (he’s Scottish true & thru by the way, as am I and am mean as mean can be). Galleries dealers market all missed a trick by ignoring me BUT they keep an age old trick up their sleezy sleeves, they get you when you die. Sadly for them I ain’t fixing to die anytime soon, so everybody loses. Except you that is you can select anything to purchase from my first 45 years output if yer quick enough.

And with expectation comes a certain belief or disbelief. ‘I can’t believe he’s done that,’ or ‘I thought, if anyone would do that , he would.’ Followed by sales, accolades, recognition. In my case these tings didn’t follow cos the expectations weren’t there. Therefore no sales etc. most everyone in the establisherment (and that includes art colleges) would not ‘see’ I did it. Consequently, like Van Cough, I never sold a sausage. In fact am tinking of starting a new publicity campaign in Germany, home of some of my art heroes like Dieter Rot, Jo Beuys and Anselm keifer. Maybe there they’ll get my achievements, my originality, my contexts. Like. My ‘Books Called Enbuk, In A Plastic Box’ (after D. Roth). And my ‘Rubbish Art’ like ‘Bedpetes’. Some people see my art as opuscule, but some (you?) love it.

my play on stools pun

Let me explain my use of stools.

Both  Dieter Rot & Richard Hamiltoe used stools in their works. So did van Gogh. So did Beuys with fat on. And Gerhard Richter

http://www.gerhard-richter.com/art/search/detail.php?5617 did a skit on his one time tutor Beuy’s fat chair.

Hamilton said of the adverts which triggered his visual pun on toilet matters, ‘Some adverts make me wax quite poetical. None more than the series by Andrex showing two young ladies in the woods. His ‘poetic visual puns manifested in several photo/paintings of women crouching; ‘Girl with Skirts up’, ‘Girl with Trousers Down’ and ‘Girl with Tights Down’. He’s dealing with a number of ideas/issues here like the way Andrex used the notion of heavenly bliss in dreamy landscapes set in forest glades to advertise toilet roll. And the fact that even the queen uses the toilet daily, queen of the slipstream, yes i know. And Rot used the turd in his work in many forms, from number twos themselves to rabbits made from cow claps (?).

http://www.dieter-roth academy.de/Essays/das_weinen_das_wahnen4.pdf see also http://www.frieze.com/issue/article/this_mortal_coil/

.I suppose we could call their contributions The Turd Reught, or A Herd of Turd, or The Art of Turds?

 

 

Watch fer the positives even in the negative

If you take a photo (B&W) you won’t get the image unless there’s a series of darks, say, the negative side of the image as against the light sides (whites & greys maybe). And there wouldn’t be an image at all when I started shooting photos with my Brownie 127 in 1961 without the negative. So we have to have negative (or darks) in life to see the whole picture. The yin and the yan. The rough with the smooth etc. don’t we.

We are such shallow creatures, well I am. I have noticed in some recent conversations there is often positive but cos am so upset by what I deem to be negative I don’t ‘hear’ the positives.

So, in the surgery the woman told me, he’s in every alternate Thursday or Friday…butti dint ear er. Cos he wernt thur the day I wanted to see him.

In the rejection email cos they dint want me on site the girl said, I’d like to have you in to help set this up, but I couldn’t see that bit cos she said I wern’t a chosen one.

In a recent blArt I talked abArt how things are rarely totally original and how artists often ‘borrow’ or appropriate or steal form the work of udders. To that list I tink we can add the word ‘reiterate’.

In a recent debrief (of sorts) someone, no names no pack drill but we can call him Phil-lip E Stein* FP Institution Stalewart VII) [*cf leader & ‘company’s man’ in the film Avatar, Colonel Miles Quaritch, the head of the mining operation’s security detail who was fiercely loyal to his military code, he has a profound disregard for Pandora’s inhabitants that is evident in both his actions and his language.’] said that  I ‘re-iterated’ some ‘wise men’, I think he meant I copied or appropriated without aknolige-meant, where I dint. But non d less, in fact by default he must have been saying what I wrote was wise because it was, in fact, mine own not a rip-off. Some people’s modus operandi is positively negative, they can’t help it, they may tink it’s clever to knock folk down with a feather^. [This sign ^ signifies a ‘reiteration’, I tink. It is a sign of acknowledgement that I have lifted an idea from someone like Salinger and Reg Dwight.]

Herr Stein (anglicised that becomes Stain from now on. Notice stain can be a blot- on the landscape, gerrit? Herr Blott, or Reich Herr Bert. A Herbert right? Gorrit?) once saw my Kokopelli necklace

and aksed if I were a hippy? No, am a Hopi* Prankster! [*Hopi people are indigenous to Arizona, known as the people of peace, have genetic roots to the Mongol peoples and a strong affinity to Tibetans. Their jewellery is uncannily similar using coral and turquoise. They see Kokopelli as a flute playing prankster spirit. Kesey’s Merry Pranksters are written about in Tom Wolfe’s Electric Kool Aid Acid Test, like some indigenous peoples they got into hallucinatory drugs and literally tripped acrosst the USA from west to east and back.] P E Stain FP ISS did it by the book but he didn’t understand the book so he rote his own. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion but nobody should use their powers to do damage to others, some do. Josh Ben Gennasareth  said to forgive them for they know not what they do. They tink they know but their knowledge is limited. So Phil thought the wearing of an ‘indian’ necklace was a hippie ting, with a consequent insinuation that to be a hippie is a bit ‘out there’ ie not acceptable amongst good company. This represented his point of view, ‘A round hole needs a round thing to go in’ or ‘You can’t fit a square peg into a round hole’. But isn’t that what we are always trying to do, we artists? Think outside the boxes. Come at it from a different angle. And all that jazz.

I must apologise to my reader (there is but one, you) for keep returning to my dark nemesis Herr Steinstainburgher of Calais^ (see Rodin), but he keeps haunting my every daydream and my mares of the nicht. Despite all of the lovely remarks I get, all the constructive observations, my mind peeps back to the one negative crit. Do we all do that? I think so, especially when the criticism is unfounded or unfair or not founded in fact.

And without criticism, without negativity, I would have less to kick against. No axe to grind. I would just do what I do and not question its quality. Thanks to his negativity I am constantly looking over my shoulder to see if another critic is coming up from behind. The good thing there is that it keeps me on my toes. Like Kokopelli I tiptoe out into the fields of rye^ and on a good day run so fast I start to …fly,,,high as a kite by dawn^…just like those indigenous ones. And if Herr Stein cared to look at all the notes he would have found that I did too acknorreledge all the mystics six in G Batch and if he lingeringly looked a little longer he would have found finesse there too, right there in the stares^ (well this is not a direct reiterate, but the mouse was on the stairs, right there^). But it wer Herr Stein stomping with clogs on which he may have reiterated from a Dutch man named Van Cough.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2fg7w49UnGA

There is a need for observers with constructive critique. Sadly many critics mis-interpret  the word to mean (and I mean mean) to criticise, it does not mean that at all. Similarly, an apologia is NOT an apology! I am always impressed by the constructive observer-critic like Robert Hughes, Alastair Sooke & Ray Rushton. The first lambasted the dirty deeds of the USA ‘art-market’. The second pointed out that women were ignored in the art of the sixties and since despite having been in there doing important stuff. Take a long look at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0441v2p/The_Culture_Show_Pop_Go_the_Women_The_Other_Story_of_Pop_Art_A_Culture_Show_Special/

And the third wrote really positive tings abart my werk for the Essex County standard in October 1993 like, “Kennedy mostly uses his plethora of open line either as a wiry composition in its own right, or more often, to knit together patches of colour as in the large painting of Topolski.” All three of these had a sound knowledge base, were confident and confortable (that’s francais) in their own skins. Sooke informed me Marisol is a woman! I had not known that, I assumed she wer a mystery man, shows how much I nose. He also introduced me to Rosalyn Drexler in his ‘Pop Go The Women’ should have been ‘Pop Went The Women’. As a result of his revelations of the omissions and discard-issions I offisherly abandon all efforts to gain entry into the Ice castles of art(s). I give up…not ‘making art’, no. this is my art or pArt of it. No, I shall continue making my art ‘til the day I die. But am not ‘attempting’ any longer I’m just ‘being’, me. No pretentions, no submissions, no entries, no mores, just me. I am 63 be blowed I don’t need ‘them’. One of the concerns is that without being in the ‘fold’ or the ‘canon’ you can’t survive. Well, I am still alive and the folded canon is much diminished by my absence,  with its lack of my presence. There is a lovely book called, ‘Presence. A text for Marisol.’ By Robert Creeley  who did not actually write it ‘on’ Marisol, he’s not a tattoo artis, is he? I had glanced thru it before Sooke and I could not equate with Marisol. I saw ‘his’ work as strangely skewed for a man of mystery about whom I knew so little and could find out less. Now I found her to be a woman suddenly it makes more sense. And of course she puts effigies of hersen in her work which now for me ismore acceptable. Doing a woman image by a woman seems a little less intrusive, less voyeuristic. More importantly it was a critic what opened my eyes to her, at llast. Sooke also blew another myth right out into Lucy in the sky wid diamontes^ with the revelation (to me, to you to me^ thanks tommy) that Pitta Slate dint do that cover after all only just a bit of it. In fact the best bits were designed by a woman called Jann Haworth. it wer she what did all those flower plants and dummy soft sculptures. Pitte slate only did the rather simple collage of lots of heads cut out of magazines, and the use of cut-outs wer not his invenshun, others afore he had dunnit betterer, like maxt Ernst and Ed Paolozzi who reiterated Ernst etc. The biggest crime was perpetrated by the ‘art/media-world wat says repeatedly thet the cover wer dun bi a bloke. and never mentions the bird. And Richard Hamilton’s work is rarely flagged up, or wasn’t, and he wer much more important in th’ pop artist vein and he also did a cover fer th’beatleblokes, the white-stick-it-inyer-family- album^. In fact one of the women, in fact more than one, actually drew and painted better than many or all o the men, as the documentary above shows. And there’s the poignant point Jann Haworth makes today, that apart from pre-dating Oldenburg with her soft sculptures she was told by paolozzi, ‘Why don’t you have them (the soft sculptures) made in bronze?’ wow, it just shows, we all get into that deeprut think. Her work did not NEED to be in bronze to make it any better, it was better, she wer ahead of the field. I did a bronze recently, i love bronze, but it’s so expensive if you can afford to have it made the public can’t necessarily afford to purchase it!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sgt._Pepper’s_Lonely_Hearts_Club_Band

The ting is, the ‘art world’ batters out the same old song. I bin looking hard at art since 1967 when I first visited the Tate. Also in 67 there wer a massive retrospective of Matisse and today there’s another big Matisse show at tate Modern, I’ve lived thru 2 maybe 3 major Lichtenstein shows, or Warhola or Henry Moore etc shows. Yet so many others never get heard of. Trouble is hundreds maybe thousands go into art training, learning various skills to sometimes very high levels and some, like me, always ‘believe’ that with enough effort & dedication they can ‘make it’. Make it ? make what? Make it into the canon? Become ‘recognised’ as players etc? when really there’s next to no chance. Probably less chance of ‘success’ in the art world than if they (both male or female) tried to become premiership footballers. In other words, NO CHANCE. People like Hey-Man Burst, Tarquin Sermin and Makesome Hairy are truly freaks of an art-nature. The art world exhibits them like the Victorians shewed people with difference in fairground freak shows and the (still) gullible public flock (like sheeps) to she em.

For me the world of art is so much wider deeper and longer than them, or any udder latest flavour or favoured it. It guz bach even past the Venus of Willendorf. Human inventiveness & creativity is really what art is about and that is its worth. So, when I once ‘taught’ art I was really teaching alternative ways of looking at and approaching a challenge, ways of creating new solutions, different ways of tinking & looking and finding. Different ways to re-iterate old and new ideas. And this country, GB, has an incredibly rich history of nurturing creative talent acrosst the arts (& sciences look at Dyson, Richard Rogers & Norman Foster) in dance, art, literature, drama and music to name but five alive^.

Image of koko jumpa

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A must to avoid, agents of no-mercy & the arts.

‘Someone submitted a manuscript which was rejected by 100 agents which had been written by the critically acclaimed, award-winning, internationally revered Kurt Vonnegut. If they passed on Kurt Vonnegut, what chance do we have? tip: don’t send any more. Take your work straight to the reader.’ (Taken from Brian Marggraf’s blog) This is an indicator of the hit and miss of the ‘arts’-world which all of us have to contend with. Marggraf goies on to advise on ‘failure’ as an instigator of success, how to succeed (suck seed) in the face of failure. I cannot retrieve his blog on failing where he tells how his own failure drove him on and how he goes thru many failures to reach one success. It was inspiring, and like looking in a mirror. http://indieheroblog.wordpress.com/2014/03/31/post-no-bills-yeah-right-guerrilla-marketing-for-the-indie-author/ Now, I have mentioned a few tings I have put forward recently for consideration by people like Burnley FC, JAB, fist site, white chapel book fair and MOMA and 2 poetry mags. Well, yesterday I visited the big city known as Londres. I went to several exhibitions including Bailey then Hamilton. At the latter I got lots of reinforcement for my new ways of working. So, I am intent on carrying on with my work. IF any of the bodies I have offered my skills to call me in then I shall do whatever I can to fulfil my promise. Otherwise, I just carry on doing what I do since 1962, 7 actually. And I awoke at 3am this morgan and I wrote: 3am, 3.5.14 An epic early morn moan mourn poem?

This blArt is about (ab-Art) ‘Failure In My Eyes’

How can you say yer an artisbloke if you don’t av eyes to sea?

If you don’t a thirst suck seed

Try fry a gem

My greatest success is my failure is my Great Success

There’s an old terrace song at my home toon

‘Bob Lord* knew my father

My father knew Bob Lord’

First I aksed Bob Lord a favour

He gave me nuffin in return

I aksed to meat him on the half way line

He just gave me a chop.

I copped it in his shoppe

I said yor norran ejucayted man

He said he were igorant o dat

 Angry old Burnley fan.

[*Bob Lord was a butcher by trade. And he butchered the transfer of the local hero Jimmy Mac. After he sold Jim down to the league below so he couldn’t play against Burnley the team rapidly rocketed down the leagues itself. He was as far as I know solely responsible for making urnley FC miss the fashion stakes. In the early 60’s when they were one of the big two clubs of the day HE BANNED TV CAMERAS!]

Then I awoke two real eyes

To the countless stars inth’ skies

The money machine took off

But I made no dosh

Wenni awoke I realised

They are not going to call

Yesterday Today Tomorrow Not at all

I done my best to reel

A sizeable fish In ma ditch

But Day Mien does it better

For Maldives he hides it

Maybe I wer rong to draw my lot

I never earned a jot

And who? were you they said

I am me Pete Kennedy

No, you tink yer David Bailey don’t ya

Well I wer forra while

They did not dig my stile

But I had to get over it

I hope that makes you smile

But in a while

Chorus

oh oh oh noh noh diddli do de do

it doesn’t Matta what you do

so long as you do la loo

poo poo

I am not staying up all night

to right this trash all write?

Just straighten up and fly a right

I bin doin that all nicht

Swung so many am a little drunk

That made me think

Which I spell tink

I had to imbibe

Or I would hab died

I don’t drink Doesn’t mean I do not drink

I think therefore I am a Yam

a yakity man

yakity yak don’t go bach

Therefore I am a philosopher

I have to be some ting

I do the best I can, can can

Maybe I’m a tin man?

I know I am no lion heart

I am just a scaredy crow, not cat

What do you tink abart dat?

Then, second, I saw my First Site associate-ship isn’t sailing (yet?) (see a next blArt on my approaching fistsite) But seriously folks, I visited the National Portrait (I did a Few too) Gallery to see the David Bailey show. It’s not what you knew it’s who you knew, I never had a clue in my ass. The I trundled on to Tottingham Caught Toad and on up past St Paul’s pad onto the Milhelmina Bridge tward the Ivory Tower ofart The Cake Moderne. Where Richard Hamilton had left his works out when he left us in the lurch. Like his bro, Rich Wittington, he went to the Paved with Gold streets where he shared his sh…(it can’t be said with immunity) but there wer a lot of it in his works. His last one was almost exactly the same size as my Venus (Third but not last see a next blArt on my approaching MOMA). Don’t get me wrong, I like his werks and he met both the Beatles and the Stones and I just met the Nowhere Man. You don’t know what you’re doing he told me too. The reason I tink they (the Beatles and the Stones that was. And it was more than a week that was) were so popular still is because they epitomised the aspirations of the war baby generation what ‘got’ the legacy of the previous generation’s legacy from the generation who fought in World War One. And everyone else since, like you and moi, has been doing it all over again. Bailey & Hamilton were there, where? There on the stairs. A little mouse with clogs on right there, going clip-clippity clop on the stairs. Like my Venus. (see a next blArt on my approaching MOMA) all the rest are has-beens. And you and me, we’re all gonna-bees. That’s the whole tooth, nuttin but the tooth. Then I bought a book on Boys no I am not like that I just spelt it rong, Buoys, no am not into sailors neither nor I just can’t spell Beuys no matta how hard I try. And a book from Christie’s catalogue, boy they bouy up there sales of Beuys don’t they, a heapo cash to make a lot o dosh from a load o tosh.

Yours fatefully,

St. Ark Ravine Bon Coeurs,

Pop Artisbuk Man.

All the images & idiot synchronicities herein are © pete kennedy 2014

I am fascinated by your reactions to this blArt, but I am unsure how to set it up easy.  I notice on Marggraf’s blog there are ‘comments’ galore on his ‘about’ page, but i do not know how to set it up. Maybe someone from head office might point me to how? anyway, me old mate DW has sent me a reaction to today’s blArt, I thought it’d be nice to show yez, also to let you see if you feel guilty abArt ‘liking’ the zany stuff watti dae, it’s OK! Others like it too. I am gerrin folk contact me and say they enjoy the play wit werds watti do. This is wat me mate ses:

“I look forward to your blarts, another fine one and your stream of consciousness is like a wide, networked mesh, lighting up like  Christmas tree lights as you are triggered by events. The energy powering this light-show is your fluid use of language to lasso and connect up carriages of connected content, for your train of thought. It is exhilarating to climb aboard your train of thought for another journey out into places that are not on the map. You are a pioneering explorer who is sharing his terrain by mapping it out as you go. This creative process, this artwork is a commentary on your mind [mine mined  mi-ned (ed*)] forays, but enriched by your deep and wide knowledge and experience of art and its world from inside and Artie-hed looking out-looking in.” *ed- that’s me mind.

Henri Chopin and others who got forgot

I went to a great talk given by Krzysztof Fijalkowski, Senior Lecturer in Fine Art, Norwich University of the Arts at firstsite in Colchester on Henry Chopin, French poet and performance artist.

talk on 30.4.14

Krzysztof Fijalkowski’s delivery was informed and infectious. He firmly placed H.Chopin (let’s call ‘im ‘enri?) enri in the field of players who have made a great contribution, more by their life style and interests than their actual output altho enri’s was not Opuscule! It is quite a significant body of work which spreads over many media. He was breaking ground in several ways. He was taken by the Nazis to Poland like my old friend Ted Walker whose life in the stalag will feature in one of my future books. Enri exscaped and joined the red army, later he was to return in ‘peace-time’ to fraternize with the Eastern bloc artists and poets who were very much into concrete poetry, well it’s obvious they were when you look at all them old concrete buildings and berlin walls they threw up. but seeriarseli folks. (hey, that play wit werds has some wit in it which I dint intend burrit’s gud. I wer mis-spelling seriously and I did seeri then added ass, well French fer smile is rire.. oh ferget it (ferlinghetti, that’s hard to spell innit). Let’s move along now. But what came over from the talk was that here in enri we had a survivor and everything after the war would be a bonus. So he moved to Ingatestone. After the horrors of the war in the East of Europe, Ingatestone must have seemed like Bournemouth. But being there would have given him room to work without interruption. Nobody went to Ingatestone. I like his work. It fits in with typewriter poems done by other more famous folk whose names I don’t remember. I wanted to say at the talk that he followed a French tradition set out by Alfred Jarry, Apollinaire but I didn’t find an in. When I was in france in the early 70’s I saw the way they write, I mean physically, their schools encourage a hand very different to say English and their notebooks are laid out differently and they use a lot of BIG repro machine stuff a bit like Xerox. He used all that too. And his play with words was done on sound recordings and we were shown his magazine called ou, pronounced oo, which was a little nod to dada, prenoonced daa daa de da daa doo. His mag used many poets what he had personal contact with and it included likes of Bryon Gytsin or whateva he’s called, the yanks coming over bringing their take on tings. And there wer this big culture, this big sort of ‘underground’ of writers who weren’t ‘famous’ (yet, some of them) who were tapping into sometimes nihilistic ‘feel’, usually anti-establishment. I liked the idea that some of Burrough’s writing was kind of theoretical. That follows in the style of likes of Henry Miller, Becket and of course Joyce. They were all into mind shifting, shifting mind from the older ‘straight’ way of tinking, subverting, changing understandings. There was a big need to shake off the cobwebs which I saw back in the 70’s and indeed was myself a peripheral part of. By hook or by crook. I did write a lot, and one of Becket’s publishers and he published Henry Miller too, nearly published one of my efforts. But like enri I got overlooked. Sob sob he cried. So I was standing in the foyer at first site and I started playing with werds ‘It could be wails like a wail of sadness or whales like…’and this lady said o we have a poet in our midst and I thort how good is thet? So I gev her my blog address, not one to hide under a bush me am I? I even gev my card to Krzysztof cos I thort he mayt like my play with werds and someone today been in to my blog from away back which I re-read and thort well that’s good, it is a form of apologia too so maybe I shall reblog it? https://apulhed.wordpress.com/2014/01/13/888/

 

 

But I won’t go on about enri, I shall let you go see fer  yoursen.

http://www.firstsite.uk.net/page/coming-soon-henri-chopin-dans-l-essex

 

By the way Nigel Havers was on breakfast tv this week told a lovely story said when they were discussing changing the name from The Comedy Theatre to The Harold-Pinter Theatre and difficulties had arisen  Tom Stoppard said to Harold, ‘It would be better if you could change your name to Comedy’. Funny innit.

http://www.atgtickets.com/shows/the-importance-of-being-earnest/harold-pinter-theatre/

ps I shan’t be going to Turn the page at norwich cos fer the 2nd year running they managed to reject us, am not bitter, I don’t drink no more bitter now. Did I say that? But on a more positive note I am looking forward to seeing the new Richard Hamilton exhibition at Tate tomorrow, now he were good. Did buks wit Dieter Rot too.