Fishy Knocker

Good to meet you

I've been meaning to ask
Did you vote for ... ?
Ah, yes, good - I thought you would, it's just
some of the young ones
They don't understand
Get the idea that just because -
But you know
You know.

Fierce knocker

Be an artist

Look at the people on the bus and create something new out of the parts of people in sight: -
a best dressed person
a worst dressed person
the most attractive composite person
the best lookalike
most likely to have a musical talent
your secret parent
your preferred kidney donor
your childhood sweetheart all grown up
your champion should your honour need defended
the one you would distrust in a post-apocalyptic scenario

Best knocker?

Panther

Amsterdam, November, Laundry Day

Christopher Robin

Door

Postcard (ii)

Barking

Poem in which everyone wears neck braces

I've seen the future and stylish
orthotics are ubiquitous.

We could not
quit craning toward
our shiny screens so
neckbraces became
must have accessories.

A wristwatch said
you were reliable;
glasses were
intelligent. But 

the neck brace
said something
more important,
passing teeth
and trousers
to be braces
type number one -
and companies
started supporting
as they did with the
tie and blackberry.

The neck brace said:
'I sought necessary
protection in advance
and will not be pursuing
damages'.

Postcard

More knockers

I had a successful holiday.

32bit Tudor

Time travel

I’m you from your future.

I’m you from your past.

My character is the same one that you 

think you created for yourself but 

I was created in different times, 

saw different things and met different people.

We’ll sit and watch Doctor Who
and think of people who exist outside 

of this time travel, and meet some
who are far removed 

from their own planet.

Torn

Everything that I knew was a lie. Specifically, I've learned Natalie Imbruglia's 'Torn' was a cover. The song was originally done by Ednaswap.

On the grounds that you may have seen the mime before, here's the latest tribute to the 90s classic.

Ancient Hunting

Passed on like tigerskin or 

autographs, down through the family.

A stranger's sturdy
towel/nightdress,
Romanticised, stored
and recreated to present
arms of ancient, noble purpose.

Now: ordered lines machined and repeated. 

Folded by hand
like an ambassador's napkin. Photocopy as 

relic, collective karaoke.

Noble is difficult, like good, 

but old we can do, 

and fast.

Knockers (Part 5)

 

My last set for a while. I've uncovered some on recent travels that I had previously only dreamt of.

Before pressing 'read more' - for full transparency - here's a list of the knockers I'd like to see someday: -

- wrecking ball to a miniature of the house
- patting hand on dog
- missile hitting the earth
- axe hitting door

Restoration, man

 

Inside every Ministry of Works 

classical facade is a self-service 

metropolitan Tesco; inside that, 

the local millennial college; inside that,
a lo-fi fro-yo hydration station;
inside that, an Airbnb rental suite;
and then, a swipecard-controlled
lift to a secret train
leading to an oligarch's 

mansion inside your pillow.

Apathy

Apathy kills
me when
she rolls
her eyes -

I laugh,
she smirks,
I forget
what I said.

The paper
is wet,

everything
falls away in
a striptease
to the bath.

(Her mother’s greek,
her dad: a misogynist.
She can hold conversation
with just the words
pity and pithy. She
sleeps in cold water.)

Once out,
she returns
to flick through
channels and
papers. She
breathes in
time. Mine.

I ask
her where the
letter is. She asks
me for a number
and sets the table
for her trick.

She holds her
hand over the
candle and counts
until the light
goes out.

Three days later
I find the letter
in the laundry.
She’s always
doing this.

Landscape in portrait

A mono print on wet paper with a bit of clickart on top.

Millennials

'Why didn't you pick up the phone? Is it harder with your new hand?'
'I was practicing my lightsabering.'
'Do you mean lightsaber fighting?'
'I mean I was swishing my long laser blade'
'-dong laser blade'
'... around to practise using it. Yes, for fighting. What else do you do with a lightsaber?'
'I dunno, cut cheese?!'
'If I was using it to cut cheese I would have said that I was having cheese - the light saber and whether it was sliced or not would be unnecessary background detail.'
'Fine. So why didn't you pick up the phone?'
'You know that some things are more difficult for me since MY HAND WAS CUT OFF. I needed to be completely aware of my physicality, to tap into the Force to better myself as a combatant - I do not seek distractions. The prosthetic is very useful but -'
'Yeah but, why didn't you use the Hans Free?'
'Is that a joke? Did you make a joke about my hand being CUT OFF and our friend being FROZEN IN CARBONITE and taken from us by the powers of evil?!'
...
'I'm sorry to have made light of it, and I'm sorry for making you feel uncomfortable before - I know you like me but I like Hans. I've lost Hans too... Has anyone ever told you that you're hand-some when you're angry?'

[the bubbles in Leila's carbonated drink start to pop prematurely as if controlled by an unseen force set on making it go flat]

Knockers (Part 4)

 


Panther. Not your regular cat family adornment.

What happened on Thursday?

 

My employer’s long term pet project was coming to fruition. I’d never agreed with its aims.

 

With just hours to go before launch it was revealed that my employer was, contrary to perceived wisdom, head of an organisation with principles running in stark opposition to those established by the founders of my organisation. This discovery provoked me to speak out against the project. The two of us entered into a climactic showdown.

In what I perceive to have been an act of support, my work colleague entered into a physical confrontation with my employer’s direct report (who was thankfully of comparable physical strength). There must have been something in the air that day, my partner also ended up in an altercation with my employer’s secretary (an Aryan blonde with a severe outlook).

As I learned more about my employer's project it became clear that it had impacted upon many. For example, my father – hitherto thought deceased - was revealed to be alive and highly capable. I was surprised and pleased to learn his separation from my family was coerced and that we share a similar sense of humour.

The four of us were able to cancel the planned project launch through a mixture of physical strength, team work and problem solving. I think we all learned something important about ourselves. There was an explosion. Once everything had been settled, my dog (who we all thought had died in an earlier explosion) returned to add a paw to our team hands in, in celebration of our success.

I'm not facing any disciplinary action for entering into a physical confrontation with my employer. In fact, my partner, work colleague, father, dog and I received medals from regal officials on a podium.

Effects unknown

 

Papillion. That's a much better name than butterfly.

Naturally

The young man and the sea

Archie Meades

Meg ran away often.
As a collie, she was expected to herd 

but the only
gathering she did was
when her vanishing acts
led me to the water's edge
to see her splash and strut
in the shallow parts of the bay.

She sensed my limits:
my school shoes
and the evening schedule.
And I knew two things: Meg hated
the feel of water on her head, and the ferry

and its wake would come every two hours.

I waited hours in the hope
she would yield to my murmured, merman pleas. 

Balls and replacement stones went fetched, 

unreturned and forgotten. 

Calls to heel were screened. 

Would she have done the same 

with sheep? She loved this 

immersive theatre.

It always ended with one of us 

wetter than we wanted,
a frequently repeated washing cycle.
We never had a chance 

to speak about it

on account of her being a dog.

Early print

Even used my hands.

Future tense

Vinyl whispers erode my froth as I sit with coffee in someone's wedding china. Me in shorts, my feet in brogues.

My pencilled K. Amis
brings me to
brandy-starers
with family crests,
leather headrests in

clubs with fees and

rich mahogany.

I and them, we
are soft-boiled men
in wooden rooms,
backwards facing
like train options or
babies after milk.

Progress, like cutlery,
can be found
in the kitchen.

Knockers (Part 3)

These stern beauts came from a house with multiple lion fixings.

 

Captcha

To escape my nan's care
home you need
to successfully enter four
digits: the year

Provocative Postcards

This idea came to me the other day, it amuses me.

Spotted

Tartan flat cap,
Bogart trenchcoat.
Face: Poirot/Clouseau,
by way of a euro
moustache.

Sloping overbridge
by the Heritage
Plc. pub, he
holds his camera
on its side

like he's Cousteau,
a ventriloquist
or enthused parent.
Stock characters
all and forever.

Faust

This is just a man from a magazine but I picked up red and black ink without thinking and it makes every portrait look 50% more villainous.

Knockers (Part 2)

Another set from my archive. Triumphs in personal taste over resale value.

Aerial

My father has a monument
in this town
dedicated
to quick-release
seatbelts.
You'll need a snorkel.

Missed Connections

Exhibit A) the french director Vincent Moon. I'm familiar with him from watching his films with Mogwai and The National.

I've been reading Borges recently, the Argentinian essayist, poet and short story writer. His story The Shape of The Sword features a coward called Vincent Moon. I've come to realise that the french director took his name from the character in the story. It's an absolute beazer of a story - I'd link to it but that would be an insult to the author of The Library of Babel, readers should buy it or seek it out in their local library.

Printwork

Warning

Don't kick stones.
You'll scratch
Your shoes
And those cars
And there'll always
Be more.

Knockers (Part 1)

I went through a bit of a phase in the last year, I started taking photographs of knockers. Door knockers. I happened to see a few exceptional ones and it made me hungry to see more and record them for posterity. It made me sentimental for an imagined past in which lovingly-crafted ironmongery was a focal point. I've been charmed by the personality-projection that can come with owned properties, and I had to learn how to walk down a street while nonchalantly checking out door knockers without looking like a burglar or plain-clothed postman as my head swung side to side. 

Here is the first batch of my collection, please look upon them as an alternative to Page 3 or wall-mounted animal heads (an analogy that comes to mind as I've seen many metal lion heads).

My toothbrush is very intelligent

'... a short stuttering sound reminds you to brush all four quadrants of your mouth equally.
A long stuttering sound indicates the end of the professionally recommended 2-minute brushing time.
The elapsed brushing time is memorised when the handle is briefly switched off during brushing. 

'To promote optimal brushing your toothbrush has a pressure control feature installed. If too much pressure is applied,
the oscillating movement of the brush head will continue but the pulsation will stop. 
In addition you will also hear a different sound while brushing.'

I thought I heard a different sound when I listened to the recording of Rowan Williams in Dresden.
Maybe I shouldn't have earphones in when I brush my teeth.

'In the 1930's Max Braun's small business grew to become one of Germany's leading consumer radio manufacturers. At the 1937 World's Fair in Paris, he received the award for special achievements in phonography ... During World War II, Braun was compelled to more or less abandon products for the civilian sector. In 1944, the Frankfurt factories were almost entirely destroyed ...'

My car was shaking on the motorway. Oscillating?
...
move or swing back and forth in a regular rhythm
Yes, I suppose it did.
Trees on the horizon looked like teeth
and white German cars swept past.
My car shakes at 80, is better at 90.
The sound changes from one of
spinning metal and shaking bolts
to the steady drone of flight.
I spent parts of the drive,
when not listening to the radio,
wondering if I could ever press
the accelerator hard enough
that my little Fiesta
would fall apart.

Gagarin

It must be about 10 years since I first learned of Yuri Gagarin, the first man to orbit the Earth, when studying the play 'Gagarin's Way' at uni. Written by Gregory Burke, the play tells the story of a factory robbery gone wrong. Set in a mining town in Fife and named after a street that exists in real life, in Lumphinnans, that was named after the cosmonaut in the 1960s as an indication of the level of respect shown by the town's council and community to socialist Russia.

Fast-forward to 2015 and we have this:



This just in from the benefits of the space race:

The All-Russian Exhibition Center, the famous general trade exhibition center in Moscow, commonly referred as VDNKh, will begin to sell authentic cosmonaut food packed into toothpaste-style tubes, starting Friday.

Visitors of All-Russian Exhibition Center (VDNKh) will have a chance to try a full-course cosmonaut menu, including four kinds of soups, various meat dishes and a variety of deserts. According to organizers, there will be 11 variations of tubes, each tasting like a different kind of food.

Read more: http://sputniknews.com/art_living/20150205/1017833052.html#ixzz3RROE6lca

Oh, and Gregory Burke's still working - he wrote '71, which looks ace.

The Blue Nile: Glasgow outlawed guitars

Hearing The Blue Nile on the radio recently reminds me of the excellent Allan Brown biography of the band, Nileism.

Facts about 1970's/80's Glasgow I learned from this book:

- Rock music performances were banned by the city council. It happened in 1956 and ran until 1976, was made possible by centralised ownership of venues, and was in response to concerns about bands corrupting the city's youth. We know how this ends.

Warhol and Morris II

My head's still full of ideas and the will to make printable things. Get over to MAO.

Espada

A plastic fish floats
on a wide black puddle,
its soy sauce belly pumped.

The green muzzle holds in city air
but we’re miles from the ocean.
Sayonara, sucker.

Missed Connections

Sometimes it takes me a long time to clock what an artist might have been doing. What follows is an example.

I picked up a pamphlet called Elucidations in the CCA in Glasgow in August, it contains two essays by a Norwegian philosopher and mountain-namer I'd never heard of, Peter Wessel Zapffe.

Zapffe writes, in 'The Last Messiah': -

Warhol and Morris

Jeremy Deller's done a great job putting together the exhibition at Modern Art Oxford,
it made me want to do this.

Ampersand

(painting a funeral director's sign)

Maybe the Finns have it right,
put all the facts in your name:
your dad, your rank, your billing address.

The paintbrush follows
the curve of her back
and the arm reaching to protect.

The mother with the strained neck, eating;
the baby dragging its padded bottom;
the mathematical symbol for yoga.

It says that what comes after
belongs to what came first,
as those eyes of yours
move to the next line.

&

Aye

Inspired by http://lostmap.com/shop/

Hello and welcome

This is where I'll put things I've made and things I've found.

And this is where I got the name (featuring the only man to play The Penguin and Rocky's coach): -

And here's a video that compares the grainy original with the Futurama homage. Oh boy, Futurama was good.