Monday 29 June 2009

Ach Thoughts.

I am deliberating over how much word I want to put on the blog. For the sake of visitors I tend to think pictures and minimal writing is enough; sometimes though I am in the mood to talk.

I just went off on one with an opinion on someone else's blog:

Jane McCoy's post brushing off the chips
I read myself in your excellent blogpost, not just in the persona but in the analysing it after. I've spent good hours negotiating the 'show myself/hide myself' dichotemy and thought I might share some thoughts with you (if you don't mind).

1) Coolness is always as we perceive. I have on several occasions been informed that it was me who appeared 'cool' at school despite the fact I was a nervous wreck. I am at the conclusion that everyone feels sensitive in the end, it just varies how we display it.

2) I come to the belief that there is something inherent to art-production that is about uncovering/covering or hiding/showing. It lead me to Heidegger.. blah blah and too much intellectualising later, I feel that the process of making art is experienced within us bodily as we bodily become extensions of the object we wish to manifest (or something..). Anyway, what I'm (taking too long) saying is that the negativity we experience is a crucial part of the dialectic and life and art-making - the boundaries, the retraction, assessment, etc. etc. Our abilities to be self-critical are not just psychologically the 'tortured artist' stereotype but just a necessary part of bringing something into the world. Being sensitive to it is because making art fine tunes our listening abilities precisely for this making process (and responding to the world around). If we had no doubt then we would be running ourselves and our art riot all over the world - a violent and monolithic way of making a mark. Ok, maybe I will make this into my own blog post... not sure... sorry to impose.... Keep up the good work, I like your drawings.

I have decided to re-post it here because it collates some of my thinking on this subject of disclosure, uncovering, truth, the ground of truth.. and the role of doubt in this process. Having suffered from doubt in various forms of discomfort/self abasement, it comes to me as something in the end that must be necessary. There is nothing more grounding than the continual return to making, producing, thinking, writing - even if this production is just the debris or excess of a kind of striving, aspiration.

Was writing a little recently on the violence of totality and the drive towards totalisation. I come to this from reading some discussions on the nature of knowledge (being a drive towards co-opting every 'thing' out there into the system of knowledge), and I live this through the disappointment of hearing sentences that I have somehow heard before, and before, and before... I'm not asking for pure originality (what's that?!) but instead am just recognising how homogeneous we insist on being in the name of our insertion into the world. I make a case for subtlety, listening, small things, sensitivities, taking the time to respond honestly, a commitment to letting ourselves respond.

(This last paragraph is woefully without references and steps rudely onto Derrida's toes. I will return to it as I think Derrida is right and that there is nothing really grounding beneath it all. But this is another post.... ach! thoughts!)

And More Pigeons





Yes I may be pushing up against the line between absurdity and boredom, but I am still very much in love with pigeons. It could be a little harmless anthropomorphism, it could be an attraction to their purely instinctual being. They seem to embody 'flow'. In groups their spacial awareness causes them to make evenly balanced patterns best seen from above.

And finding the odd squashed one on the road still affects me.

Thursday 25 June 2009

Wednesday 24 June 2009

One Hit Wanders

On to one photo posts at the mo, though I think the last couple of shots are strong enough to withstand it ;)

Woke with strange dreams of filming slugs and fishes in rising cave water this morning.

Tuesday 23 June 2009

Monday 22 June 2009

Derrida Drawing

Not sure if this will work but anyway...



..it's the product of the last talk on Derrida I attended at LSE, over a year ago now. I don't know if it works because the pencil is too fine really for the scan, but maybe the general idea is there - responding to the discussion with both words and doodles or free-flowing pencil marks, like automatic drawing...

Saturday 20 June 2009

Friday 19 June 2009

The Sea Sounds








Low-tech lustre.

Dedicated to David Eng, Last Nights of Paris Beautiful music, beautifully sensitive.

Thursday 18 June 2009

Monday 15 June 2009

Solid



Solid, a bit out there on a limb.

Observations





Like I've said before, there are so many reasons to write or to throw something out into the world. Today my ventures are like the lone survivor clinging to a piece of his broken ship, his desperate grasp at life before being dashed against the rocks in one of Poseidon's best storms. A little dramatic, but then maybe that's part of feeling melancholic - the dramatic, the performance, the identity in it.

Saturday 13 June 2009

Wednesday 10 June 2009

Tuesday 9 June 2009

Fun Feeling Famous

Thought Themes To Build On (2)

There's a moment that happens when one event that we percieve jumps from its normal setting and seems to suddenly be from another reality, and in that moment the two (different) realities become one, transforming everything. I am finding these moments all over the place now and am thinking of it as phenomenological observation. I'm preoccupued trying to put the experience into words.

This is what happens when Spring eases into Summer and the Cicadas begin and we are all sweating in the lazy sleepy and quiet afternoons.

Thought Themes To Build On (1)

Current topics of interest:

crystalise - a moment in time, of time, a realising, the birth of a structure
revelation as disclosure, uncovering
phenomenological description vs writerly imagination
mothering, mothership, as a state and concept
facing the world with our viewfinders already configured to see according to the structures we already know
destroying structures, destroying worldviews, in order to see reality again

the experience of being absolutely structureless and out in the world
despair

rebuilding

Hermeneutics

4th June 2009

Souvlaki yoghurt round our lips, cold flat chips left neglected, perhaps my writing is nothing more than an excersize in self-deception. Effect, building a life, beer to drink.

Up To Date

Been a little distracted by life, summer, friends, Twitter, the bar. Here's some pics:









Tuesday 2 June 2009

More Fishes



Fishes from the harbour today. Water a little murky. Tunes just perfect.

Like A Flash

On our walk home last night we sang the Beatles' Across the Universe and talked about God and the godlessness of modernity. Somehow the Twentieth Century appears to me now like a flash of brutal ideologies and the very force of it and the drive towards secularisation is exhausting.

Sweet thoughts and feelings about beauty and God and higher feelings.