EVERYBODY'S TALKIN'

Everybody's talkin' at me 'bout me
I don't hear a I hear EVERY word they're sayin'
NOT only the echoes of my mind
I won't let you leeeeee...eave
My love behind

Apologies to "Everybody's Talkin" by Fred Neil. Sung by Harry Nilsson on sound track of "Midnight Cowboy."

Just when I thought The God Interviews book was going off the radar, suddenly there's a buzz buzz buzzing going round and it's making me extremely delighted.

A delightful review by Jamieson Wolf at the Book Pedler .

Debi Alper delightfully mentions my presentation at Apple Mac (it's this Friday)

Kim of Reading Matters delightfully mentions my presentation at Apple Mac (it's this Friday)

Paul Gravett delightfully mentions my presentation at Apple Mac (it's this Friday)

Mark Vernon has delightfully posted (18 June) my Richard Dawkins & God comic strip on his blog.

Stefan Bucher has delightfully posted my Serendopterus Ironicus monster on his site.

Win Wiacek of Comics Creators Guild is about to post a review of God Interviews any time now.

Delightful is a very good word to repeat when you don't want to pile on the superlative adjectives but still need to express your gratitude for bountiful attention. I am truly grateful, no joking, this is from the heart.

I still haven't had a chance to write about (but I will) a delightful meeting on Saturday with Tamar and Andy and Jean this too (see her report, she's captured it).

And I haven't had time to blog about another amazing event, the first performance of John Tavener's Beautiful Names which I attended last Tuesday at Westminster Cathedral. But I will.

Now back to work on that presentation. It's this Friday.

GOODBYE MIRCEA, MY FRIEND

Once you told me that the years
You spent in solitary confinement
When the Russians took your country
And put you in prison for your thoughts
Were the happiest of your life. Do I remember
Your words rightly, Mircea my friend?
I remember your laugh most of all.
Was it in the silent darkness that your laugh
Was born? Nobody laughed like you.
Every conversation got the gift
The punctuation, the conclusion
The grown-up version of child's unbroken joy
Raucous lifeloving spring bubbling
Out of harsh desert sand
Filtered through burning rocks
The wisdom of your laughter.
Yesterday I heard that you were gone, my friend.
Oh!

Rest in peace Mircea Marosin, Romanian theatre director, designer, painter, writer, philosopher, linguist. Born in Bucharest 1921, died in Cambridge, UK, June 2007. I met him in the 1980s when he came to the printmaking classes I was teaching at the City Lit in London. He wanted to learn etching in order to produce a limited edition of prints from drawings he had done based on Ovid's Metamorphoses. He was too impatient to become an etcher and didn't like all the cleaning up involved but we became firm friends. I can hear him laughing now

SERENDOPTERUS IRONICUS

Chris Ritke of the sparkly 49sparks pointed me to this site where illustrator Stefan Bucher creates a daily monster and urges all his visitors to do likewise, beginning with a spidery ink blot which you download then elaborate in whatever medium you choose. You email the finished thing back to him and he displays it on his site. Best of all are the animated sequences of Stefan drawing his monsters. Of course I couldn't resist yet another distraction so here's the monster I made and posted to him tonight. Can't I do anything that isn't autobiographical?

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Malaguena Salerosa

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Chingon's version of the famous song with my silently sung version.

IMPROMPTU MALAGUEÑA

This month is going too fast. In an attempt to slow it down and stretch it out I wasted some more time today and here's the result. Well it's still autobiography innit? I've always loved this song. It's sad in an ecstatically happy way.

It's also on my YouTube page if you don't see it here.

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WE ARE AN APPLE MAC EVENT

Haven't had time to update the autobio because I'm preparing a presentation to which any of you who are in London on June 29th from 7-8pm are invited. Come and ask questions, heckle, applaud or just say hello. Anyway if you haven't been to the gorgeous Apple Mac centre in Regent Street, just off Oxford Street, you have a treat in store.

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NATHAN'S DREAM

I don't know if this belongs in the autobiography or not but it's so intriguing I had to illustrate it. This is the dream that Nathan Horowitz had about me a few days ago. We've never met in real life but have been blogging friends for a while. He's a very good writer and obviously a psychic dreamer: how could he have known that I can hold my breath for eight months at a time?

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The AUTOBIOGRAPHY CONTINUES

Haven't figured out a way to visually/verbally combine the Mickey and the gnovel yet but I'm wrestling with it.

For now I'll turn this space into autobio space and just see what happens. If you've just walked in you need to go backwards to catch up with what's been going on.

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EUREKA PROBLEM AND SOLUTION

A thought came to me in Bristol, maybe in the hotel room, maybe at the comics convention:
the Burial of Mickey Mouse and the gnovel are not two separate projects.
This felt like a revelation, a Eureka moment.

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BRIEF BRISTOL COMICS REPORT

Sales were good, people were great, weather was lousy, future looks promising, and hope - like new ideas - springs eternal.

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