A Hawk and a Hacksaw w/ the Hangar Ensemble @ Leeds Trinity Church on 7/5/7

Were you to become this sound at this point you would never answer your phone.

A point all at once blood-saturated and mad histories, heaths and inky lightning-rent skies – the depth of harpsichord, clavichord, trumpet, a clarinet-saxophone, double bass resonating in the pews – the babble of party corridors you have dreamt of / wished for – the raised now – the intimation, un-detailed & not at all to do with – out up down & very away from the searching for – an involvement, a congregation swaying as it is made to become the opening inhale draw of the accordion – hey, there is no rave on the other side of town, you bring your where-is-it-and-will-there-be-anyone-there agitated walk here.

And there are belled ruddy jangling men hopskip dancing all around in the air, moustachioed tinkerbells who have drunk and fought fathers – many.

And it gets into this shambling blast of solo on solo where the sax becomes an elephant, the trumpet darts out, snapping, the double bass a great dignified brass tulip (string reaching down down to bulbous and then blown out root rivers, down), the violin meanders, courses, is the forward point of a river enriching its parenthestic and dark soil, the one drum a gorilla (wiv hat) beating chest, a rolling beat thru shamboling wood clearing filled sphere, meshy with overlapping solos rising.

dialogo oído (conversation overheard) viendo a (whilst looking at)Blowup por (by) Lyle Ashton Harris @BIACS, Sevilla, Dic 06



“Hombre, la cosa funciona
Man, the thing works

es como pegan.
its like they glue.

Ella es compleja ¿sabes? piensa demasiado,
She’s complex, you know?, thinks too much,

el vé a las cosas en blanco y negro.
he sees things in black and white.

Y funciona, la cosa.
And it works, the thing.

Estarán juntos para siempre,
They’ll be together, forever,

pero siempre…
but I mean, forever…

Pregunté a mi madre
I did ask my mum

una vez
once

si esta realmente contento con el.
if she’s truly happy with him.

Es que ellos se rompieron,
The thing is the two of them split up

yo que se, para un año,
for, I don’t know, a year,

ella estaba con un tio asi, intelectual, totalmente artista
she got together with this guy, an intellectual, a complete artist

pero al final volvió a mi padre.
but in the end she went back to my dad.

Me dijó que si, se lleno intelectualmente,
She told me, yeah, he filled her up, intellectually

pero nada mas.”
but nothing more.

(image courtesy of the Rhona Hoffman Gallery)

1)incoherency २)understanding

Just saw superbe James Thieree show, clowning with some of the very French humour of his grandad.

Here's the Sadler's Wells snip which gives a sense of it. The bit with the rocking chair is... MAGIC (if magic is the unwilling suspension of disbelief?):



There was something really liberating in the incoherency of Au Revoir Parapluie. Having the frame of mostkulture broken. Minus narrative, superficially interiorized characters, punchlines etc, normal understanding goes out the window.

More on Zidane

Posting on Johnny Flynn, writing about people in their element, got me thinking about ol' Zizou. Here's a couple from the archives I wrote when I was working in Madrid.

Zidane COMES BACK (vs Mallorca, 9/05)

Zidane comes back
with a sultry beard
and more shaven crow’s peak.
Tan as if his convalescence was ages beside Homer,
playing keepy uppy with bleached pebbles,
conversing with a mutual gentleness, an irascibility,
volleying into the sea.
White shirt like the angel icon Adidas know he is.
Roman-
Algerian
angular
bunch
upright
slouch
of angel
willed back.
Children looking in at the bar window think mortelle and
join the Santiago Bernabéu as it holds
its 80000 breath
willing the ball to him him him
gasp
he leaves it.
It runs to Julio Baptista.
The better attacking option.
Human
perpetuation of will and
bunched enchantment of 80000
plus us.

----

Zidane GOES AWAY (vs Italy 7/06)

In terms of me, well
46 degrees today in Spain and looking around a cathedral in Toledo and reading the paper on the train and things at work are ok
you, there,
surrounded by 60 odd thousand
in significance-rich, history-compact Berlinstadion where
all the world’s eyes look and want
to be
you.
You are your own. Sharing your darkness. Rolling away. You spreading light doing things that cannot be done. You are why
we heroise.
You are our
mythic functioning.
What sadness did you intimate when you headbutted Marco Materazzi?
quite gauchely, in his chest, nearly tripping.
Yes what racist shit did he say and yes did he pinch you and had he been niggling all game
but, where did that come from?
Your last match.
The last visible point of your humble glittering.
The World Cup had been an unexpected epilogue, you were done for and physically and emotionally not right but you began again to be lit, to beguile, to conduct.
So suavely,
and the strain shown on your face
hauling ten men to the Final,
wrapping the rope about your wrist, and bleeding something for you must,
and doing it with grace,
a grace we lack… And then this.
You could have held it together.

doing your thing

With certain people there is a sense that they are doing what they are supposed to be doing. What they were made for. An apropriateness of being, an easy rapture. And when you share a space with that kind of person it is exhilarating. It is rare. Because society, at least in my experience, is such that it makes it a rare thing. I can count the times I've been near this thing on one hand: Orifice Vulgatron, the main emcee from UK hip hop outfit Foreign Beggarz, who used to go under the name of 'Drop' as dnb mc, freestyling outside a club in Leeds, in 2003 maybe (there's loads of this lot on youtube, I should dig out some old footage from Leeds parties...); in 2006 I worked in Madrid and went to Real Madrid's home matches - Zinedine Zidane, well I hardly need to add to all that's been said about the man's grace when he's running round with a football.

And I think I've come across another ONE, doing what he was made to do: check Mr Johnny Flynn. Stay tuned because I'm going to be interviewing him in couple of weeks.

Something you can't look at in an art space

In July I went to see a friend in the final performance pieces of the class of 2007 Leeds Uni Theatre Group, and one of the pieces raised what I take to be a similar point to Richard Prince at this year's Frieze Art Fair - a point about art spaces। In the (Leeds) piece, which was more a live installation than anything - the refusal of the ‘characters’ to cross in to the usual space between them and the audience emphasized the voyeuristic aspect of being in an audience -there was a young lady, on a pedestal, getting undressed. And the 'audience' were, mostly, clearly uncomfortable to be seen looking. Hesitating to be seen looking at a young, getting-naked thing. There were other 'characters', on other pedestals, doing other things: someone holding a chocolate ice cream aloft and not letting his grin falter as it melted down his arm, someone doing a repeated series of yoga-ish stretches, someone soliloquizing grandiloquently on why she was amazing - all weird things, but all 'easier' to look at than this girl taking off her clothes. Something you (this theatre audience) didn't want to be seen to be looking at. Something you can look at in the anonymous confines of porn sites, or at a car show, or in your night dreams. Something you can't look at in the paid for sanctity of a shared art space...



What I take to be a witty point. A point worth making?

Also, Frieze is “so Capitalist its Marxist” but who cares? Culture is relentlessly commercialised, art shouldn't not be a part of culture. Well, at least not always...

Three Studies for Portrait of Lucian Freud by Francis Bacon

I
There is the snapped nerve of the universe
Whence this motion.
My eyes carry this,
Turn,
Thru what was the middle eye and will enthuse out.

The impression of a young boy
pulse
pulse
pulse
judder swell skirrs
before my left eye, I ma my most damnable father
before my left eye
holding up a sage hand.

Consternation for your urge, your lust
and your removal of the sun.


II
Ecto boy I and father are fastened on that plasm banner you say is opaque invisible
Francis I feel you seeing, seeing
bleeding down.
If you see my right eye u see where I am what I am looking into.
Raptor Innocent X
tracking the motion turning enthuse
Is it a horizontal arc?
I am but man I can follow
Some vomit and olives drirl from my ear


III
I am mind gone whole,
I am over there,
there is my immanence’s sequela,
sequela is my beyond-escape. Pope Cardinal X was em, beyond-intent.

And and universe’s quick
pus is lemon colour paint between su
where again will snap,



here comes another tuurn whither, whither tossed out of mauger scarlet.

U, Francis U, let em speak yet


“Francis Bacon talking about Rembrandt in Gadfly piece, March 1998”