Blaugustine's Other Blog

Tuesday, May 28, 2013

A CONTINUING STORY

Still not entirely free from the grip of that tenacious virus which has zapped my energy and replaced the usual contents of my mind with repetitious song lyrics...do you ever get that? Suddenly the words of a pop song you heard about a century ago are playing non-stop in your head? Down and down I go, round and round I go, under that old black magic etc etc. Somebody take the needle off the broken record!

However the resolve to get on with continuing the autobiography is still there if not yet the actual getting on and so to fill this blank space with something relevant, here are some pictures. The first one is of a construction I made in 1984 to serve as housing for an illustrated journal I drew in 1973-74 - that's the journal on the right. If you turn the handles below either of the columns on the left, a short paper scroll unwinds with my name on it.

The Continuing Story NdA 1984/1974 Mixed media construction. W 40.5 x H 23 x D 10 cm

The next two pictures are of cast-paper experiments from 1996. I made the mould in plaster of Paris then poured the homemade paper pulp into it, adding some colouring. When it eventually dried, the paper was lifted off the mould and behold, an ancient relic!

The Scribe 1 NdA 1996 Cast paper. W 20 x H 14 cm

A few alternative versions emerged from the same mould - here is one of them:

The Scribe 2 NdA 1996 Cast paper. W 17 x H 12 cm

The process is great fun but incredibly messy and you have to be willing to sacrifice your kitchen blender to make the paper pulp, it's useless for anything else afterwards. Serious paper-casting artists do this sort of thing with appropriate equipment in appropriate workshops but for me, it was just one of many non-sequitur technical experiments.

A COLD IS NOT A COLD AND TV OVERDOSING IS DANGEROUS

Laid low by that thing called "a cold" which is actually a slap in the face, a kick in the gut, some well-placed punches to nose and throat and a bit of eye-poking. Whatever measures you take to get rid of this agressive viral squatter, once it has occupied your premises it will happily guzzle all the Lem-Sips, hot toddies, cough syrups, echinacea and whatever else you consume in self-defense but it will not leave until it's bored and decides to hunt for another innocent victim. What the tiny thug likes best is wrecking well-laid plans, so my train ticket is in the wastebasket along with my anticipation of a fun day of drawing with a group of other artists who met up (without me) for a Portrait Party in Oxford on Saturday.

Doesn't it look just like it feels ? This is an image of the Cold Virus from here .

Since most of my energy is blown into tissues every few seconds, work on the Trans-Siberian images has been interrupted and even reading feels like too much effort. Music doesn't penetrate the fog and the computer is too demanding, so sleep and/or televison are the remaining options. Normally, I rarely turn on the tv except for the evening news and maybe an occasional film, but in the last few days I've overdosed on tv at all hours of day and night and this, I'm sure, is how total brain removal is achieved.

Your own mental content is pushed out and replaced by an unceasing stream of innumerable other people's mental content while you sit there hypnotised by the flickering screen. Some interesting, intelligent, informative, amusing things flicker by along with various degrees of idiocy, banality, violence and perversity but the flow of images and sounds doesn't differentiate between them anymore than an ocean differentiates between sailboats and sewage.

I can't prove it, but I'd be willing to swear that the more time is spent in front of a tv screen, however worthy the fare, the more creative energy and originality is drained out of one's consciousness. I suppose the same thing could be said for sitting at a computer screen all day, or staring at any of the other digital gadgets feeding our brains visual and auditory information 24/7. Have you noticed the glazed, zombie-ish expression on the faces of teenagers, as well as pensioners, or any age group in between, who spend a great deal of their time staring at screens, be they small hand-held or wall-sized ones?

Anyway, it's only taken me all day to write this little blogpost so all is not lost. I will get on with getting on with the autobio, yes, and with Trans-Sib, of course. Give me another day or two to exterminate the woolly, creepy, sneaky, mushy, malfaisant, Machiavellian "common cold" and all will be well.

TO AUTOBIOGRAPH OR NOT TO AUTOBIOGRAPH?

Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer (silently) the slings and arrows of outrageous (or delightful) fortune or to blog about them - that is the question!

One of my resolutions for this new year was to continue and complete the online autobiography The Burial of Mickey Mouse which I began way back in 2005 and left hanging in mid-stream in 2008. But doubts about the validity of this project added to normal procrastination guarantees that it will remain in limbo unless I kickstart it back to life.

The doubts I have concern the issue of self-exposure, which of course includes exposure of others who have affected one's life. If you are world famous, dead or alive, and of interest to the general public, your life might be the subject of a biography by someone qualified, or unqualified, to write it. But if you are not world famous and still alive and decide to be your own biographer because, after all, you know more about the subject than anyone else ever will, how much should you reveal? This a rhetorical question because the horse has bolted: I've already written twenty-four autobiographic episodes in which I exposed myself pretty thoroughly so why am I now debating pros and cons?

The mystery of identity is one which has fascinated me ever since I was a child: who is it that looks back at you in the mirror? And who is it that looks out of your eyes at the world? I am not really interested in the psychology of the self but simply in what it is: what is that thing which has my name? Genetics, heredity, history, biology, physiology etc. have only partial answers and I'm not going to list all the philosophical or spiritual theories, beliefs and speculations about the Self.

It's not information I'm after so much as the encounter with that thing which is "me". Like someone or some thing you've heard a lot about, seen in pictures and in films but have yet to actually come face to face with. It's not that I don't have 'self-consciousness' - quite the contrary. But it seems to me that in the telling of the story of my life something would emerge which I could not know if I did not tell it. Perhaps because the effort of condensing the story and focusing mainly on that which marked me most deeply is in itself a way to dig up the "Mickey Mouse".

Looks like I've stopped debating and decided to carry on autobiographing, doesn't it?

BLAUGUSTINE IS TEN YEARS OLD

and it's typical that I wait until the very end of the day to mention it. Once, when I held back until the last moments of a workshop just as everyone was about to leave, to say I wanted to speak, the psychologist leading the group looked at his watch and said "Do you always wait until the last minute to ask for attention?" I admitted, yes, that's what I do. But he stayed, everyone stayed, and I had my turn and it was life-changing.

That was thirty-eight years ago but I'm still convinced that time waits for me and that I can stretch it like elastic and that, somehow, I can get away with it. Just because. Because it's me. It's also the reason I avoid as far as possible answering the question "How old are you?" Call it denial, call it delusion, call it whatever you like but some stubborn little voice insists that I don't have to follow the rules of time and I'm not going to contradict that comforting and optimistic voice with stupid facts.

Asking for attention (late) was, I suppose, the main reason I started this blog ten years ago and am continuing it, though less frequently. All sorts of other factors come into it but at the core was (and is) the perennial cry:

Hey! I'm over here! Hello? Anyone there?

Isn't that the cry heard all over the internet, with various degrees of intensity or diffidence? Expressed beautifully or poorly, patiently waiting or giving up when no echo is heard? We all want to communicate, to share, to eavesdrop, but I think that a basic human need is to be acknowledged, to be recognised. As in: oh, there you are!

I AM. You ARE. That's what blogging is about, isn't it?

Serendipitously it was via one of my favourite blogs that I recently discovered someone whose thinking resonates profoundly with me, Professor Jacob Needleman. Lucy, of box elder fame, mentioned that Tom, her husband, has just started his own blog, gwynt, so of course I went to check it out and was not disappointed. Go there to savour for yourself his perfectly presented and nourishing food for thought. I was also intrigued, in his profile, by the list of Tom's favourite books and that's why I followed up Prof. Needleman on Google and then, excited, ordered his book Lost Christianity which I am currently enthralled by.

But it's five minutes to midnight now so I'll be damned if I don't post this before my blogday celebration ends! No time to include an image...I'll do that tomorrow. Go ahead, congratulate me!

Hey, anyone there?

OPEN BOOKS at BAY ART, CARDIFF and the BUTTERFLY EFFECT

When bombs explode at the Boston marathon, an earthquake strikes deep in Iran, a gold mine collapses in Ghana and this planet daily palpitates with every conceivable tragedy it seems insanely trivial to be mentioning an art exhibition in Cardiff but if I start to weigh things according to their universal value then I might as well stop right here and forever hold my peace while the animal I call Pushkin whose owner named him Ben though his real name is simply cat sleeps on an orange chair next to me, well, this too is trivial compared to the incomprehensibly vast and shockingly indifferent cosmos but there's the butterfly wing effect, isn't there? So maybe nothing is irrelevant and it's not too reprehensible to write insignificant blog-posts.

I arrived in Cardiff by coach on Saturday afternoon in driving rain, wind and cold so it was a relief to enter the cheerful Bay Art Gallery and see a few familiar faces among the crowd. I was greeted by Mary Husted, the artist and Open Books exhibition curator and her husband Professor Andrew Vincent who were my kind hosts for the weekend. I was also glad to see the poet Ivy Alvarez, a blogging friend who lives in Cardiff.

The sixteen artists' accordion books were beautifully displayed on individual shelves and tables or hanging on the wall, making it possible for visitors to get up close to each work. While the National Library of Wales in Aberystwyth did a superb job of showing these books when the exhibition first opened there last year, the necessary glass cases do create a distance between the audience and the work which this more intimate setting eliminated. As usual in such occasions I intend to take many photos but end up with none or very few since it's more interesting to talk to people than to record the event. The composite photo below was taken and designed on her i-pad by Mary Husted's talented 11 year-old grand-daughter.

The two photos below are the only ones I managed to take and they are, egotistically, of My Life Unfolds. I don't know who the people talking in the corner are but they make a great tableau of their own.

THE LESSON

Probably my favourite construction is one called The Lesson. A short video of it is here but there are many other possibilities that this odd tableau suggests which I haven't yet explored. It was originally inspired by the bathroom in the flat where I was living: there was a narrow, deep-set window looking down onto a tall tree which I could see when I sat in the bath. I was drawing Augustine cartoons at the time and the giant bird with a message just popped up out of nowhere.

The initial walls/folds of the scene are lined with mirror-foil and in this photo they reflect a plant in my living room. There's a tiny book on the window sill next to a blue crystal ball, the title is Pensieri in Italian. It's a miniature book I found. I painted images over the text of some pages, repeating motifs from this scene.

The Lesson NdA 1992 Mixed media. W78 x H29 x D15 cms�

FOR A GOOD FRIDAY

I don't remember where or when I found the bone/skeleton which inspired this assemblage nor do I know what creature once animated it. But its extraordinary ressemblance to a crucifixion immediately struck me. I inserted a thin strip of wood behind the 'crucified figure' but otherwise altered nothing. A small palette knife painting I did a long time ago provided a Middle Eastern kind of landscape and two small stones plus a suitably deep frame completed the scene.

Even though I was brought up Catholic I have never felt I fully belonged in that tradition - there are too many things I question and disagree with, and that goes for all religions. As I try and usually fail to explain whenever the subject of faith comes up, I do believe in God but I don't believe that God is a member of any human religion.

The concepts we are taught, whatever culture we come from, are merely the opinions, the points of view of human beings, shaped and solidified by repetition over thousands of years. But faith itself is something else. It has an independent existence which is not necessarily the result of any kind of indoctrination. Some people are believers because they've never questioned their tradition, some because they've been converted to or have freely chosen a particular tradition. But some simply 'have faith' - it is part of them, like their name or the colour of their eyes. It's not a crutch, not a consolation for all the suffering life doles out, and not an explanation. Inexplicably and illogically, it just is. That's my position.

That a crucifixion should be the main symbol of a creed which, before becoming institutionalised as a religion, was based on love - love of God and of our fellow humans - seems to me very strange. Couldn't they have made a logo for love instead of suffering? Suffering is always unjust, unfair, tragic - whoever it afflicts and for whatever reason it happens. Jesus on the cross did not deserve to suffer. No one deserves to suffer.

On this Good Friday I send love to all who suffer, whoever and wherever they may be, and may the God they believe in, or do not believe in, bring them a resurrection.

NEW PROJECT IN PREPARATION

A while ago I mentioned that I was waiting for an exciting new project to be confirmed. Well, I can now reveal that it is definitely going to happen.

A new collaboration with The Old Stile Press on a limited edition book: Dick Jones' wonderfully spirited English translation of Blaise Cendrars' (Fréderic-Louis Sauser) chef d'oeuvre, the long poem Trans-Siberian Prosody and Little Jeanne from France, illustrated by me. Our project has received the blessing and agreement of the rights owner, Miriam Gilou Cendrars, daughter of Blaise Cendrars, a most interesting person in her own right. I'm currently immersed in her marvellous biography of Cendrars which brings to life this elusive and complex poet so vividly that you feel part of his circle of friends, family, lovers, critics and collaborators and the time and places in which they lived.

Preparatory work has been simmering for the last few months but my task of creating the images and making the relief blocks to be hand-printed by Nicolas McDowall begins in earnest now. It's going to take a long time before the finished book appears but I know it will be stupendous. I'm not going to blog about the work in progress - I think that would spoil the final effect.

For now here are a few more not-so-recent constructions/assemblages. By the way, in case you were wondering, some of those I've been posting are for sale. If interested, email me please.

MISS PEPSI

Miss Pepsi might be her given name but she has never touched the stuff. She's made of tin and her smile is forever fixed. She's jolly but something in her eyes tells you not to mess with her. She might be saying come hither or bugger off or wadder you lookin at? She's seen better days but makes the most of her unorthodox appearance.

CRIMES OF THE IMAGINATION

That's the title I gave to this construction, consisting of found objects arranged inside an old cigar box. There is a story to it but I prefer to leave it unexplained - spectators can invent their own story. The hole in the cover reveals the clockwork of the vintage pocket watch attached inside the box. The handwritten text reads:

The Prince (the Prince?) departs
broken-hearted.
The Princess has fallen (fallen?)
off her pedestal.

Time runs out.
Now the truth
will never be known.
Real tears are shed.