Drawing on Rembrandt inspirations

I done a flurry of London visits & reported them in my last couple oblArts; Poetry Library (A Happy Man) & Keifer (Books of lead fly in the R.A). This week I saw the new Rembrandt show at National Gallery (which was the first London gallery I visited as a kid of 10 years in 1961 and I sent my dad away so I could just sit and look at the Leonardo cartoon fer an hour or so). Of course I love his self portraits but the best in show are the etchings, the way he works the surfaces of the different takes and the surprise that he printed them on Japanese paper which was being imported by the Dutch East India Co. in the 1600’s! despite her overt military history epitomised in their fascination with the sword there’s been ages of producing beautiful pots, paper & calligraphy there. For me Rimbrandt is unequalled in the fields of oil paint & etching. F H Haagensen was a great etcher who was probably inspired by Rembrand’s technique, as was most certainly Picasso. Funny how ‘great ‘ artists get access to collections of work that many of us never see. Auerbach  http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2014/aug/29/frank-auerbach-painters-painter-freud-tate-retrospective  and Lenkiewicz http://www.plymouthherald.co.uk/Robert-Lenkiewicz-s-estate-settled-decade/story-17699462-detail/story.html in their separate ways took inspiration from the Dutch Master too and so did I, take a look at my Van von Maan painting below

Van von Maan

 

keifer

ken campbell

josef herman

We live in an age where the ability to ‘draw’ is almost scorned (by some prevalent ‘successful’ artists and their agents) but it is deeply embedded in my psyche and I love drawing in the different ways I do. Over the years I’ve sat and drawn Keifer, Josef Herman, Steve Berkov, and others with Lord Bath, Feliks Topolski and Ken Campbell amongst my ‘sitters’. Oh and by the way, I do love rembrandt’s self portraits which put him up there as probably the best chronicler of the process of aging with their insight into his very soul, that goes without being said, burram saying it. And you know i do a fine line in self portraits misen th’ knows:

d’y mean pete kennedy?

this is ma best self portrait innit, catches the spirit widdin!

The skill was hard earned and am reluctant to desist. I shall draw til I die (drawing?) I draw cartoon like with my Apulhed-man, in surreal sketches with my Squidgerats. I draw inspiration too from the work in many media by those who have achieved before me. So I read folk like Philip K Dick, Vonnegut, Mervyn Peake & Brautigan in the hope that some of what I see may rub off on my outputs.

And it’s the same with poetry, although I write my ‘poems’ from a deep sense of apart-ness I don’t try to write ‘like’ anyone (else). But I am inspired by some. I write intuitively I write what comes and I don’t try to write in any grammatically ‘correc’ way. Interestingly when I wrote the ‘poems’ for Inside This Earthen Vessel they had little or no full stops nor commas. As I began the collaboration with david Jury some punctuation crept in but often I do not have it in my writing (like I do not adhere stricktly to ‘correct’ spellinks). Both of these avert-tions allow me to be free(er) and (more) inventive.

I am reading Beckett’s translation or transmutation of Apollinaire’s poem ‘Zone’. I don’t exactly agree with his changes, great writer tho he was, but I do note that Apollinaire has used no punctuation. A WRITER WRITES WORDS. So my punctuation in  Inside This Earthen Vessel is the gaps I left. I write this thought then I stop & drop to the next line. Often in poems they start each line with a capital. OK that’s fine, that’s OK, I can do that, but sometimes I refuse.wrtiting for me is to do with the jist, getting the gist, of things (tings) of ideas, notions, suggestions… my writing is not scientific like Wittgensteins is was etc.

For me writing is communication, getting what’s in my mind, spirit, soul, experience or view over to others. Some may say that I might communicate better if I spell by convention, punctuate & grammaticise my pieces. OK you’re entitled to your opinions and your conditionings. I am free of those constraints. And I hear you laugh or snigger and say ‘Yes, free of income, free of distribution through official channels, fields etc. But see this face, AM A BoVVad.

 

NEY*

(can’t he even spel nay reight?)

he neighs like a donkey

do they

neigh

nay not never

nay mare

nay

tha’s not ritten

an udda poym

lad

?

who fetched the cow?

nay not eye

norri

nor I

 Next weak am in Oxferd to see a bloke gie a tork abArt William Blake, now there’s a proper poet bloke man. And an etcher?

*I bought an lectric typewriter t’other day, I just decided that this will be the first poem I type using it. I thought I’d try my fingertips at tie pin sum concrete poyms. Just like what Henry Chopin and his lot did. Vache dis spaced oot.  https://apulhed.wordpress.com/2014/05/01/henri-chopin-and-others-who-got-forgot/

Anselm’s alchemy: Books of lead fly in the R.A.

flying lead  books

If you glance upwards as you climb the stairs in the RA you’ll see books made of lead seeming to lift off under wings of lead. That, is, MAGIC! And it continues thru Keifer’s show in which he transforms lead into gold leaf, makes an horrific mantrap look like a spider.

 

[editor’s note- Sorry, that’s the best I can do, I cannot find an image of the painting cos a little SS-Oberaufseherin, Miss ‘More then me job’s Worth’, came and stopped me taking photos and I cannot find it on the web. I detest the policy some galleries have, most in fact, of prohibiting photos, music & theatre do it too. It’s counter-productive. The more folk can see the stuff the more folk are invited to go see it ‘in the flesh’^ see foot o post.]

But she couldn’a prevent me from drawing the damned tings

L’Origine du monde, pencil sketch by PK after AK 19.11.14

  

 In ‘Sand from the Urns’ (from the net) he creates brick monuments from paint and sand on canvas which reminisce pyramidal monumental forms and pays tributes in them to Paul Celan* http://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poet/paul-celan  & his lover,  Ingeborg Bachman http://marjorieperloff.com/reviews/songs-in-flight/ . [* never heard of either, so I still have a lot to learn].

For Paul Celan by AK, the picture in the exhibition is a bit better than my sketch but now I have added color it looks more like the real ting (not!). aks me if I care, I don’t like Keifer’s art, I love it! And you may notice I have snuck a jug in too.

Whereas van Gogh drew in ink, Auerbach draws in paint but Keifer does both AND he draws in lead, shellac, latex, wire, sunflower as he transforms form like a magician. His translations of what makes a book are astounding to me.

Now for some images what I took at the conversation he had last Thursday morning peppered with words from Imagine Keifer http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b04pzt6g/imagine-winter-2014-5-anselm-kiefer-remembering-the-future

 

 The artists I admire most turn out to be ‘thinkers’ like Rauschenberg, Schwitters

and of course Keifer who said , ‘Nietzsche said, “You know the philosopher has to stand, we have to dance” The scale of (my work) is the product of the dance.’

 

This image shows the scale of many of Keifer’s images.

 

Look down there at what that bloke from Burnley (who Hamburg knocked out of the European competition at the quarter finals in the 60s ha ha) has done he’s made a pictorial pun of me balancing different selves, or is that shelves, or am I being a selfish fish?

He’s re-arranging realities, make him an Academicien like what I is.

 

‘When you are an artist you know you have to connect things in a different way. This is what artists do, they create a new connection between things’.

{^ another ed’snote, not for you if yer not into football, the beautiful game- One massive example of prohibition going wildly counter to the intent of the prohibitor is my home town football club, Burnley and the reprehensible policy of the then chairman Bob Lord, who was also a big noise on the FA. He thought if he banned the TV cameras from Turf Moor more folk would visit the ground to see live matches on match days. He was wrong. At the time Burnley were one of the top two clubs with Spurs, a fact that remained the case for several years in the early 60’s Burnley were bigger than Man U and Liverpool then! Look what happened. TV cameras do the opposite to what Lord thought, they publicize a club and folk flock to see them. Burnley faded away after Lord, in another of his marvellous decisions, sold local hero Jimmy McIlroy, to lowly second division at that time Stoke. Burnley dropped to the foot of Division 4 and nearly shot out of the league altogether whilst close rivals Man U & The Bill Shankly Pool went on to be European Champs. So if & when you come to any of my shows etc bring yer cameras!}

A Happy Man.

A Happy Man.

Sandwiched

Between

Nancy & Sam

Pete Kennedy

16.11.2014

 

‘tangajorsarpaq eye am this orphan’

 Am rejoicing as the week has arrived for two trips into the Big City o’ Londres. I went up yesterday for a full filled day at the Poetry Library where I saw our work in such good company and two bee sandwiched between two such great practitioners as Nancy Campbell & Sam Winston was indeed a privilege. I was of course looking at werds; my verds watti wroted (not like Roth did) and David Jury printed ‘em, Nancy’s words, sam’s words, then loads of others’words like- Gaudier Brezka, Ezra £, Diter Wrot, jon Cage, Gins-oak-burger, Jean Cokatoe (I love her sketches), and many more. However you can’t go see it even ift you cry, it wer only up fer one dae. So am putting some small photos in this blArt to show you what ya mist. And I did this bit of nonsense using up werds wat I sore.

 I wer particularly inspired with Sam’s work, ‘Orphan’, in which he used a lot of words he had rote and cut & pasted. So I did the above cut & Baste misen. Eclosion means summat to do with changing frae a pupa to a angel, I tink the transformation has begunned. I invent a new word from a bill stick on a Paolozzi muriel at Tottinghen Caught Rude tube station, Ekanity

,

it’s a bit like eternity but a bit longer, or shorter, who dares? I have finally fully launcehed misen into the muddy pastureyes of the cut & Blast, some o’t werds cum frae BLAST. Thur’s mad in yer eise Einsteye, Eisenstine, Eyesore, eye eye, oh begorrah bagum.

Then at 8pm 3 poets began to read their reactions to what they had seen in the boxes of books prepared for Sunday’s display. William Wyld went first and did a tribute poem to one he’d seen about mud. I loved his words about a reluctant rebellious recalcitrant seal melting into the snow, ‘You took my claws but you couldn’t take my head’. Then Patrick Brandon read his words inspired by John Cage’s Silence on Rauschenburg. Then he did one filling in the gaps in Tom Phillip’s Humument with words like, ‘What is life other than matter complicated by time…’ In my poem in the exhibition I also refer to humans as energy. Hilda Sheehan talked about life and death too, I suppose poetry is lots about our mortality. I enjoyed her Kiss.

She too referred to John Cage’s Silence. Her poem went

Silent

it just

dis

ap

peared.

It was a poem for Georgina, after holding up a tiny piece of tangled wire Georgina had made and hung silently last year:

I’m impressed with your strings

Hung up like mirrors

Shhhhh…

silence

 

Shhh… let these (very small) images tell the story.

 

Nancy’s beautiful Icelandic poem

Nancy uses Inuit words for love (I tink)

Pete & David’s collaboration poems

I Yam a Seeker of Toots

Pete next to Sam’s poem

How Sam plays in clouds

At TotCort Rd the mural needs replenishing

 

Pete auditioning fer Egg Heads

It’s my Blart and I’ll try if I wanna.

BlArt & BATCH Explained?

It’s a New Dawn.

I have decided to re-blog this old blart cos it sort of explains some of my ideas, where they arose and all. I am lucky to have been given a 20 minute slot at BABE in Arnolfini Bristol next April http://www.arnolfini.org.uk/whatson/babe-2015-bristol-artists-book-event during which (4pm on the Sunday) I shall be doing one of my little ‘talks’, which are not talks at all but some form of performance. I have done that kind of thing since 1973 when I did the first Appleheadmasked-Event. I reserve the elephant of surprise so I don’t tell what am going to be doing to nobody but believe me I plan these tings well. I make it look like it just happened, but it didn’t, in fact I awoke planning the ‘talk’ fer nex April at 6am today, I don’t plan to plan it just appens. The lovely ting is, Chris Leonard, who was instrumental in getting me to do the 1973 ‘Apulhedmask-In’ has already expressed his intent to attend! Nice. I look forward to seeing you Chris.

However, this reblog, as there’s a lot more traffic on my blart nowadays I thought I would just let you see why it’s called my blArt. And why my book about spiritual tings is called a Batch, which in fact does no justice to the content and several people have arsked me to re-name it, which I may in a reprint.
G BATCH contains the initials of the men I call mystics inside the book, G is for Gurdjeff etc. I also like the reference to ‘batch’ which for me is a group and in digital spiel is also used for a group. Funny that. Oh and don’t worry about my ‘talk’ being too serious cos it will be, and it will be funny too, I call them seriously funny, or they’re just funny, seriously. Namaste.

apulhed tingling

I’m Bloggin, just Bloggin and I Know you like blogging it too! Thank you Bob Marley. (In about 1972 we stood and watched him at Rolle College Exmouth play about 3 hours before he became ‘famous’, there were about 30 of us. We were lucky, I just kept downing my pint and wiggerling to the sound, went to the bar, gorranutha pint, wiggled back to Bob and his wailing alongsters. I never thought to bring my camera nor invite him and his boys to play football in the afternoon. Talk about missed opportunities.

Now I am taking the blog line, I still take photos but I had to stop playing football about five years ago. Not before I had the chance to play with my veteran side against Jobserve at Upton Park, twas like playing on a billiard table. Lovely.

Now am changing the name of what I do in…

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My blArty Story

Pictures from my pArts.

I just posted my 100^th blArt, now it’s time for changes. Many of my previous blArts were very wordy. I noticed by experiment that most folk prefer the shorter versions. That is understandable in our busy busy world. Folks have jobs to do and they wish to make the most of their ‘spare’ time so don’t want to be farting about trying to de-cipher the words of this idiot, especially when he plays with the spellings and the meanings and all. So I decided to do my next phase of blogs as mostly images, of which I have made maybe millions, well, thousands then. All still in my possession cos nobody likes me. (He said tongue in cheek, he hopes, ‘Am I Bovvad? Yep’. But I take pleasure from the fact that many people have liked my works in the past 47 years even tho I rarely persuaded anyone to delve deep enough into their pocket or purse to then bear the heavy weight of the coins and transfer them into my greasy palm d’or, not. Nevertheless, staying poor made me strive more.) I cannot be criticised for not trying, my wife says am rather trying anyway.

So, let’s begin, with some early works.

I used to get bored in lessons when I were 15 so I would draw folk. My Engilsh teacher Mr Dobson seemed on first impression an idiot but in fact he were a very clever man what taught me how to write proper.

My dad was a demolition man, couldn’t afford a camera in 1967 so I drew his handy work

 

My first drawing from a photo c.1968, Supreme

I got my first commission from the head barman at the Sparrow Hawk, Burnley. He told me I would paint a horse. I said I couldn’t do horses but he were an’ard case and I knew I had to turn up with the goods or get a broken dose.

When I were doing ‘A’ level art I painted the local streets form the art room window. Lowry was an influence but I was well into Fauvism too. That’s Hapton in th’background!

So by the time  I were in th’upper sixth I saw misen as a artist, destined fer the garret no doubt. (There’s absinthe in them pockets)

to be continued

Tribute to David Clayton (77),

I hope the Burnley Express don’t mind me appropriating this image and the following words:

‘devoted former Burnley headteacher, who inspired generations of young people by encouraging them to go to university during a career spanning decades, died in September 2014’.

I remember those kindly eyes looking at me as a rather distracted 6th former in his history lessons and 12 years later when I paid a visit to him when he became the Head of the combined Boys &Girls Grammar schools just after he had bought some of my work out of my 1981 Burnley ‘retrospective’. I remember him saying to me that I had done well and that to succeed away from the ‘security’ of your home town was quite an achievement. My memory of his gentle determination in the face of challenging pupils was a constant inspiration and example when I became a teacher. There’s not many of my ex-‘teachers’ I would wish to mention in my blart but ‘Stan’ was one who I treasured, partly because he valued me and my ability, wherever that may take me. He was my history teacher at ‘O’ & ‘A’ level and during the latter introduced me to the skill of essay writing, using a pile of source books rather than relying on just one (text) book. Throughout my 2 years in his A level classes he would consistently give me 16 or 17 out of 20 for my homeworks. He famously confronted me one Monday class saying, ‘Peter, you used to be so focused but recently you seem somewhat bemused.’ I didn’t dare say the reason may have been my having played 3 games of 90 minutes in the Lanc’s mud, and visited the working men’s club on Friday, the Mecca on Saturday after doing a job on the turnstiles at Turf Moor in the afternoon and the pub plus Mecca on Sunday. I was bemused by his comment but I was actually asleep during most of his lesson even though he made history interesting.

Mr Clayton, who was born in Horwich, near Bolton where he went to school with Ian McKellan remained a lifelong friend of his even though he was convinced he was better at acting than Ian, he chose the academic route and graduated from Merton College at Oxford with a degree in history. My interest in research and writing and my self belief all started with his encouragement. In 1981 when I had a big exhibition in Burnley Library David came and bought several pieces. Bless his spirit.

Here is the note from my old pal DW in which I heard of Mr Clayton’s death, Duncan begins with a few observations on this blArt:

A breath of fresh air Pete. It is wonderful to see the budding of an artist and what is so different from someone who may doodle and splash paint for a bit at school  is that a committed artist/creator cannot stop, he is driven to keep going and the insanely artistic shape their life around their arting and oeuvreing.

The Byron Street view from the 3rd floor art room at BGS is stirring for me. I have looked that way many times, the melancholy of those slate roof tops just seeps into me, they seemed to me like a world apart from the BGS world of filtered air a preparing station for leaving our roots. Those houses seem to be edging and crowding up to the gates, but not allowed to cross, they knew we were in a transit station being prepared to forsake our terrace houses. I was in two camps, I felt exhilarated at the prospect of learning the skills needed to leave, and yet, when I looked out of that classroom window I felt a warm glow of association to my home, I felt good walking out of the school gates at the end of the day, into the warm embrace of Byron Street.

Dobo was a teacher that you only appreciate fully when you have left school and grown older, he didn’t teach as much as imbue an aura of learning and also showed how to retain ones true and honest persona.

Did you know Clayton died in September http://www.burnleyexpress.net/news/education/former-burnley-headteacher-77-dies-1-6816161

my likes, influences and all dat stuff

I guess as more folk get into this blArt they’ll wish to know wat meks me thick? It took a long time to get dis bad, so here is a big potty hisStory of my main likes. Manaste Yorbaste

apulhed tingling

I thought you may like to see this, a past article ‘published’ on canongate’s meet at the gate. I hope it all comes up in the blog on Sun Oct 19, 2008 09:00 PM GMT and posted on this blArt about a year ago, when I were ony 62!

I am an artist/writer living in the Essex countryside. I have had 20 exhibitions in Essex since 1978 and one in Burnley, my home town.

My life as an artist began at Todmorden Road Junior school at the bottom of Lyndhurst Road in Burnley when I tried (vainly) to copy the ships, cars & horses that my friends, Steve Hezzlewood and Roy Gidley, drew. Before I left junior school I wrote a piece about the reincarnation of two donkeys which I called Jack & Jenny in respect to my parents whose nicknames were the same- my life as an off-beat writer had started.

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I’m Larfin at the woild’s great jest.(Shorter version)

The long and the short of it. This is the short version of this blart* for the long version go to:

https://apulhed.wordpress.com/2014/11/02/larfin-at-the-woilds-great-jest/

*What’s a blart? It’s my bl…Art. my blog, my blathering on, my blaggart.

 

I stayed at home all day which gave me time to think, to mend a bolt on a gate, chop some wood, scythe some weeds and wash some dishes, twice, and look at some autumn leaves then notice the new thin crescent moon. I did not go for my regular swim, gym, yoga or ought like it but I forgave myself saying you can mend a bolt and all that stuff.

My blArt don’t get millions, neither thousands* nor hundreds o ‘views’ but tens is quite fine by me. 25 views yesterday and several folk wished me an ‘appy Day on my 64^{th. *Actually my 97 blArts have had 4352 views (average 45 per post) now in about 13 months! TANKS A BUNCH} We do have to make the most of all our days cos we never know when the finger will beckon or as Lennon once put it, ‘we move from one car into another’, as he moved from his bullet riddled old vehicle into his new disguise. Of course I ‘get’ that Buddhist ting about acceptance and letting go but am not really into their idea about not leaving a mark as a result of our endeavour. Shakyamuni (Buddha’s tribal title) left a considerable mark and his influence is impacting on my thoughts 2500 years after he released from his human frame. Of course I would like my traces to be predominantly positive and full of humour, laughing, like Chesterton said, at the world’s great jest. So, here’s a little ting in which I am going to appropriate some more famous folks’ words and after Walt Whitman’s ‘Song of Myself’ I’m calling this, an appropriation* poem:

See my previous blart- https://apulhed.wordpress.com/2014/04/19/i-wanted-to-be-an-artist-but-im-alright-right-now-right-what-is-original-what-is-quality-part-2/

Song To My Self

 

‘Old man, look at my life

I’m a lot like you were’

A song about an old man Neil Young

sang that when I were young

 

back in 197young

forever young

I sang it to myself

screeching just like Neil

 

it sounds different now

no longer I am

wow

forever young,

 

‘Young man, look at my life

I’m a lot like you, how

I wanna live

I wanna give

I kept on searchin for that heart of gold

Now am getting old.

 

I bin done my life

You go do your life

We’re both still searching

For the blArt of gold.’

 

I may be getting …old

Buttam not giving up

Still

Amidst all the dissolution

Creating my contribution

A trail of distribution

With much convolution

 

Leaving a Trace.

Neil Young guesting in DW’s band not playing my ‘Song To My Self’

I was scouring the shelves in the Saison Poetry library at Southbank and came across a poet man called John Peck, and I wish for you to see some of Peck’s words in his poem about existence ‘Anasazi, Ancient Enemies’

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/181150

I think Peck is talking about the eternal links that exist throughout all time and all things and maybe the need for mutual care and consideration.

Hopi kachinas at Mesa Verda

http://www.cliffdwellingsmuseum.com/anasazi/digging-deeper-into-the-anasazi/major-anasazi-region-and-sites The reference to Anasazis recalls the mysterious people who built those cliff dwellings in Arizona. Peck is harking about how many things are interlocked even though we are unaware of the interconnectedness. He more importantly talks of the mystery of life. ‘One needs to feel the tug of the draft [or waft?] on skin, the drag of process utterly anciently itself… streaming through us, ageless winds’. Here is he referring to the timeless, or eternal, passage of ‘existence’ which goes back to the Big Bang and maybe beyond? And ‘streaming through us, ageless winds’ like neutrinos stream thru you as you sit NOW this minute, time, or rather the process of existence, streams on thru us, we are inextricably linked into EXISTENCE, that and maybe that alone is the miracle. We are here. You are there, wherever you are, some of you who read this are in India, Kazakstan, Japan. We are where we are, we are part of it. Namaste.

Larfin at the woild’s great jest.

A note frae the Big Blogger Bloke about The long and the short of it.

 This is the long version of this blart* for the short version go to:   https://apulhed.wordpress.com/2014/11/02/im-larfin-at-the-woilds-great-jest-shorter-version/

*What’s a blart? It’s my bl…Art. my blog, my blathering on, my blaggart.

 I stayed at home all day which gave me time to think, to mend a bolt on a gate, chop some wood,

the logs wat I chops

(by hand, NOT I uses wedges and sledges and well honestly, brute farce)

scythe some weeds and wash some dishes, twice, and look at some autumn leaves then notice the new thin crescent moon. I did not go for my regular swim, gym , yoga or ought like it but I forgave misen saying you can mend a bolt on a gate, chop some wood, scythe some weeds and wash some dishes and all that stuff.

My blArt don’t get millions, neither thousands* nor hundreds o ‘views’ but tens is quite fine by me. 25 views yesterday and several folk wished me an ‘appy Day on my 64^{th. *Actually my 97 blArts have had 4352 views (average 45 per post) now in about 13 months! TANKS A BUNCH} We do have to make the most of all our days cos we never know when the finger will beckon or as Lennon once put it, ‘we move from one car into another’, as he moved from his bullet riddled old vehicle into his new disguise. Of course I ‘get’ that Buddhist ting about acceptance and letting go but am not really into their idea about not leaving a mark as a result of our endeavour. Shakyamuni (Buddha’s tribal title) left a considerable mark and his influence is impacting on my thoughts 2500 years after he released from his human frame. Of course I would like my traces to be predominantly positive and full of humour, laughing, like Chesterton said, at the world’s great jest. So, here’s a little ting in which I am going to appropriate some more famous folks’ words and after Walt Whitman’s ‘Song of Myself’ I’m calling this, an appropriation* poem:

See my previous blart- https://apulhed.wordpress.com/2014/04/19/i-wanted-to-be-an-artist-but-im-alright-right-now-right-what-is-original-what-is-quality-part-2/

Song To My Self

 

‘Old man, look at my life

I’m a lot like you were’

A song about an old man Neil Young

sang that when I were young

 

back in 197young

forever young

I sang it to myself

screeching just like Neil

 

it sounds different now

no longer I am

wow

forever young,

 

‘Young man, look at my life

I’m a lot like you, how

I wanna live

I wanna give

I kept on searchin for that heart of gold

Now am getting old.

 

I bin done my life

You go do your life

We’re both still searching

For the blArt of gold.’

 

I may be getting …old

Buttam not giving up

Still

Amidst all the dissolution

Creating my contribution

A trail of distribution

With much convolution

 

Leaving a Trace.

 

Neil Young not playing in DW’s band not singing my ‘Song To My Self’.

I was scouring the shelves in the Saison Poetry library at Southbank and came across a poet man called John Peck, (he trained as an analyst at the C.G. Jung Institute),  http://www.lrb.co.uk/v22/n12/clive-wilmer/on-the-turn  and I wish for you to see some of Peck’s words in his poem about existence http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/181150

 

‘Anasazi, Ancient Enemies’

 

in dream or flapping images of the gone

or the soon-to-be-going or the tremblingly poised

that catch like undertow

the foot in tide-rip toeing

 

down the singing or remembered beach

we study populations in the forests,

we hold the paper flat,

mark, note, warn—the dictated

 

prophecies do their work, we do some work—

cut horn from rhinos so they won’t be poached.

but, to go on from there,

one needs to stand in the doorway

 

some evening and feel the air as if it were fire

pulling illusionlessly, letting the draw

of one fact heat its chain

of links, such as, Japan

 

clear-cutting forests in Siberia

where tigers not already harvested

lope their dwindling range,

two hundred as the hinge

 

for their growled arc of existence, bones of the others

ground to powders for old men’s potencies.

One needs to feel the tug

of the draft on skin, the drag

 

of process utterly anciently itself.

Faster, now, the pull is from birth through dwelling through

dissolution, along lines

streaming through us, ageless winds.

© John Peck

 

I think Peck is talking about the eternal links that exist throughout all time and all things and maybe the need for mutual care and consideration. He blasts the killing of rare species to gain bones to be ground down to nebulously aid ‘old men’s potencies’. (Have they not heard of Viagra? It’s cheap as chips compared with the tragedy of making a species extinct.)

http://www.cliffdwellingsmuseum.com/anasazi/digging-deeper-into-the-anasazi/major-anasazi-region-and-sites The reference to Anasazis recalls the mysterious people who built those cliff dwellings in Arizona and who probably were the antecedants of the Hopis and Zunis my two favourite peoples of North America. I have been inspired and fascinated since the mid 1970’s by the Hopis and those characters standing on my drawing of the mesa are Hopi Kachinas what I drew too. He refers to the many cultures that have been and gone in the history of planet Earth, many of which we (normally) know little about. But really Peck is harking about how we do not fully understand the significance of many aspects of our existence, how many things are interlocked even though we are unaware of the interconnect. So, RESPECT is the call he is sending out, respect the mysteries. He more importantly talks of the mystery of life. ‘One needs to feel the tug of the draft [or waft?] on skin, the drag of process utterly anciently itself… streaming through us, ageless winds’. Here is he referring to the timeless, or eternal, passage of ‘existence’ which goes back to the Big Bang and maybe beyond? And ‘streaming through us, ageless winds’ like neutrinos stream thru you as you sit NOW this minute, time, or rather the process of existence, streams on thru us, we are inextricably linked into EXISTENCE, that and maybe that alone is the miracle. We are here. You are there, wherever you are, some of you who read this are in India, Kazakstan, Japan. We are where we are, we are part of it. Namaste.